I don't think anybody thinks this roster is close but if we draft well and make good acquisitions, there's no reason it has to take longer than 2-3 years.
The roster
@silverfish posted is very solid. It's attainable and we could see something similar on the ice this coming camp. Is it a Cup contender? No, but it's probably a playoff team. It's young and relatively cheap. They're not going away any time soon and we'll have time to infuse the high-end talent we need. In the meantime, the team will be fun and watchable, which is really the goal. If you need to win the Cup to have fun, then it's time to quit hockey.
Now I know what you'll say - we need to pick high to get the elite talent. Except we don't. Kopitar was taken 11th. Karlsson was taken 15th. Keith was taken 54th. Barzal was taken 16th. Leetch was take 9th, McDonagh was taken 12th, and Lundqvist was taken 205th. We're probably picking higher than all of those this year. Even a guy like Schiefele was taken 7th which I think is realistic for us this year.
Our lack of elite talent isn't because we've never blown it up. It's because we've blown picks and because we've outright traded all of our 1st's which we stopped doing. We've had Giroux on the board, we've had Tarasenko on the board, we've had Getzlaf on the board, we've had Burns on the board, we've had Josi on the board. We had elite talent and didn't select them. It isn't because we didn't have first overall. It's because we blew the picks.
If everyone stays in their spot (which is worst case scenario for us, since we're out of the top 3) we pick 10th as of today. Many of the mocks have Boqvist, Woo, Smith, and Dobson available in that spot. We could easily get our future #1D out of this draft without being in the Dahlin spot. We pick four more times in the top 50 after that in an absolutely loaded draft. If we don't get at least one high-end NHL player out of that, then we ****ed it up, and it isn't because we didn't tank.
Do I trust this front office to not blow the upcoming picks? Not sure yet. Am I disappointed that this is like the 4th time we've blown the roster up under AV and haven't removed the common denominator? Absolutely. I don't know if this is the right answer. But I do know that blowing it up and sucking for ten years is not the right answer.