I guess I agree with this. I don't think I've ever won a tournament without at least one big hand. That doesn't make it luck though. I've won or placed in many tournaments without ever dishing out a major suckout. For the most part going deep is just a matter of winning more than your share of coin flips which I guess is in itself a form of luck.
First I think one must determine what definition of "tournament" is here. If one is playing in a tournament with a couple hundred runners they ABSOLUTELY have to be lucky to win regardless of your skill level.
Say you start with 5000 chips in a 200 man game, this means there are a grand total of 1,000,000 chips in play. Obviously no one weaves their way through these fields by stealing blinds a getting everyone to fold to C-bets... every single person who goes deep has at many points built their stack in chunks, not in chipping away. Sure some of these are on hands that have seen a flop or more but anyone who has played their fair share of poker tournaments knows without question that there are an obscene amount of preflop all-ins.
Say throughout the course of the game you've gotten it in as a favorite seven times... with AA vs 99, KK vs AT, AK vs AQ, 77 vs AQ, 66 vs AK, set vs open-ender, set vs flush draw (I don't think this is a stretch and if anything is much stronger in Hero's favor than reality normally is). One can say if Hero wins these hands he has simply avoided getting unlucky... the math says he was a 20-1 dog to win them. Throw in that JJ vs QQ hand that comes through for you and it skyrockets to 100-1. Just have to win your flips? Sure... but in going 5 for 5 the
odds are 33-1 against.
I have won my fair share on high turnout tournaments (200-2500 runners) and can tell you that in most I have at some point had my entire stack in the middle needing to catch.
No one wins a higher turnout poker tournament on skill alone... it's never happened and it never will.