Apologies to all that we seem to have gotten a bit OT with regard to how many prints does it take to get a keeper, but the monitor calibration/softproofing detour we've been on lately is actually pertinent to the question. You don't need softproofing to make a great print. A great print can be done iteratively (even by the numbers on a crummy, uncalibrated monitor) just as it was in the chemical darkroom era. Moreover, if we stick to a limited set of media and perhaps just glossy or pearl photo type papers that have excellent color gamut and dmax, then many people can get pretty good at "Kentucky windage" where they anticipate what the print will look like as it is translated from image appearance on the display to print on paper. That said, a prime reason for softproofing is to cut down on the iterations. Softproofing helps me get really close on the first try. From there, I may make one, two, or sometimes three additional prints to get to my keeper when I'm in a perfectionist mood. If I don't use softproofing, the iteration count definitely goes up, even when printing on a well calibrated output device. And, without a calibrated printer and good printer profile, all bets are off. Sometimes, you get lucky, but most times it's an exercise in pure frustration, so I truly dislike printing on uncalibrated systems, even ones that are nominally characterized with generic profiles. The very first thing I do with a new printer/ink/paper combination is build a custom profile. It definitely saves time and paper. This has been my personal experience. Your mileage may vary.
I am just beginning to try printing from Lightroom sans a softproof method, but I'm sticking to high color gamut, high dmax media where the printed results aren't so far off what you see on screen without softproofing. It's not hard to anticipate the outcome in this specific circumstance and dial in some lightroom presets. Yet, if truth be told, what I mainly do with Lightroom is repurpose RAW files in batch to standard colorspaces like sRGB for friends and clients who would have no clue what to do with the RAW files. For this purpose, Lightroom needs no softproof feature. For high-end printing to fine art media, my files definitely make the trip into PS for the softproof capability, even though I may then take the final print-specific version of the file out to other page layout apps for the final printing.