Think back to 2011. The Ottawa Senators were going through their mini rebuild after trading away Mike Fisher, Brian Elliott, Chris Kelly, and Alexei Kovalev, and they had one of the best, if not the best farm system in the NHL.
Ottawa’s future was looking bright as they still had Erik Karlsson, Jason Spezza, Daniel Alfredsson, Milan Michalek, plus a bevy of talented prospects such as David Rundblad, Jakob Silfverberg, Jared Cowen, Mika Zibanejad, Robin Lehner, and many others. Although many of these players developed into good NHL players, not all of them did it in Ottawa, and not all of them reached the ceilings they were supposed to.