Sure, Ottawa hasn't accumulated as many 2nd round picks as Arizona. But they certainly accumulated significantly better assets during their rebuild than Arizona has so far during theirs. Have the Coyotes traded for a Josh Norris? Or a 1st round pick that lands them Tim Stützle?
Also considering the amount of U24 talent we have on the roster, our depth is not at all embarrassing. It's filled with the type of prospects you get in the 2nd round (Jarventie, Ostapchuk, Hamara, Merilainen, etc). We have lots of them.
You're going to hold it against the team that their best prospects have actually made the in their late teens and early 20's NHL and are no longer listed in the Athletic's rankings?
As far as difference makers, Bill Armstrong had Kuemper, OEL, Garland and Dvorak to trade.
Pierre Dorion had EK, Stone, Duchene, Hoffman, Pageau, Brassard and Dzingel to trade.
It's not exactly a fair comparison, but for the record the Canucks' 9th overall pick that ended up turning into Guenther was probably a more valuable piece than anything Dorion got for us.
Difference between the two is that Armstrong was able to acquire 10 second round picks by trading Hill+Stepan and taking on Ladd, Gostisbehere, Stralman, Ritchie and Kassian.
Dorion only weaponized his cap space once by getting a 2nd for taking on Paquette and Coburn. Only ONCE in a 5 year rebuild. He preferred to waste our available cap space on acquisitions like Murray (6.25M), Stepan (6.5M), Gudbranson (4M), Boedker (4M), Namestnikov (4M), Reilly (1.5M), J.Brown (1.2M) and Sanford (1.5M). Complete waste of money, not to mention assets. Gave up multiple 2nds and several mid-late round picks to acquire those players, which were not recouped when they were eventually dealt.
Completely missed our opportunity to take advantage of dumb spending by cap teams by utilizing our cap space during the rebuild. Our system is already stretched thin. Coming out of a 5 year rebuild and a complete tear down where we traded more talent than any other team I can think of in the last decade and we have only a couple guaranteed NHLers in the pipeline. It's disgraceful.