Ask other teams what they think of our drafting/development. They have a lot of our former draft picks among their players...
Since 2008, Ottawa has been one of the best teams at the draft table, particularly when you account the position of the draft picks. Also, note that the 1st round picks in 2010 and 2014 were traded for prospects/players that ended up being Bobby Ryan* and Kyle Turris*. Say what you want about these 2, they played 862 games for the Ottawa Senators, scored 224 goals and 540 points (0.63 PPG = 51 pts / 82 GP). Oh and also did very well in the playoffs (67 GP, 20 Goals, 21 Assists, 41 Pts, 0.61 PPG = 50 pts / 82 GP)
The 3 highest picks from 2008 to 2017 (10 drafts) were a 6th OA, a 9th OA and a 11th OA pick (traded up from 12th OA). There was also 2 picks at 15th OA, one was traded up from 18th OA... The rest were from 17th to 28th (and no 1st round picks in 2010 + 2014)
I'm sure at least 50% of teams have had higher picks than 6+9+11 during that period. Despite that, this is what has been produced in ONLY 10 drafts
Tier 1 (Impact players/Top-6/Top-4) : Karlsson, Stone, Zibanejad, Chabot, Hoffman, Turris*, Ryan*, Lehner
Tier 2 (great/good support players) : Pageau, Silfverberg, Zack Smith, Dzingel, Ceci, White
Tier 3-4 (great/good depht players & short term careers) : Borowiecki, Lazar, Grant, Sorensen, Noesen, Cowen, Wiercioch, Wideman, Harpur, Claesson, Prince (didn't list "cup of coffee" guys with less than 100 GP)
Remains to be seen : Batherson, Formenton, Logan Brown, Driedger, Daccord, Dahlen, Bowers, Wolanin, Jaros, Chlapik, Lajoie
6 star/impact players, 2 top-6 forwards acquired via trading a first rounder, 6 more good secondary pieces, a lot of depth pieces and among those who remain to be seen, at the very least Batherson and Formenton are going to be good/great NHLers for a long time, plus a few more will certainly do something (like Driedger)
If you don't think it's extremely impressive, I don't know what to tell you
2018-present looks extremely promising too and since we went into our first real rebuild, the picks were much higher than usual, than they have been since the first 4-5 years of the (new era) franchise. In only 3 drafts (not talking about the unknown 2021 yet) :
Tkachuk, Pinto, Stutzle, Sanderson, Greig
Bernard-Docker, Sogaard, Jarventie, Kleven, Sokolov, Merilainen
Crookshank, Thomson, Daoust
Gruden, Kastelic, Guenette, Reinhardt
lol it's going to be an insane haul.