Yeah, I agree that Vanek, Fleury, Zherdev and Horton aren't particularly impressive top-5 selections, but I don't think Eric Staal deserves to be lumped into that group. In a lot of ways, Eric Staal reminds me a lot of Mats Sundin. A big #1 franchise center who had one massive offensive season near the beginning of his career, and then every year since then, he's consistently been at, or slightly below a PPG/30 goal pace every year while rarely missing any time to injury and occasionally throwing in a 40-goal season.
I think in any year, that's counts as an impressive top-5 selection, particularly when he wasn't picked first overall.