The belief isn't thinking the prospects you mentioned will be the stars of our future as we recreate the Pesky Sens, that's some false equivalency that you've created.There was a belief among certain people that the Sens were going to rebuild with guys like Rudy Balcers, Logan Brown, Christian Wolanin, Christian Jaros, Filip Chlapik, Vitaly Abramov, Jonathan Davidsson, Max Lajoie, and Joey Daccord. They thought these guys were going to be part of the future, and it broke their brains when it started to become clear that this was not going to be the case. This is basically ground zero for Dorion Derangement Syndrome.
Its that we have so many developing players in the system, why tf are we paying assets for utter scrubs and vets that we have to later sell pennies on the dollar for? If we're trying to tank, stop spending money and draft capital on players we don't need. Using nonsensical intangibles like "leadership" for guys like Gudbranson and Stepan is absurd and doesn't make any sense. There's no way to prove that, NHL players rarely criticize their peers. Dorion managed to give up draft capital and spend money while trying to rebuild.