What we should expect and what we'll have to discover
It sounds like some people think this team will and should tank for a longer period of time. But just looking at the "expected" building blocks, that's already five (5) top-10 worthy picks right there. Plus there is some wild cards and a LOT of good/great prospects that could themselves be worthy of high end picks (most were 1st/2nd round picks to begin)
Building blocks
Brady Tkachuk 4th OA : 2 NHL seasons
Tim Stuetzle 3rd OA : 1 pro season in DEL
Thomas Chabot 18th OA (goes top-10 in re-drafts) : 3 NHL seasons
Jake Sanderson 5th OA : should start being a regular in 2021-22
Matt Murray 83th OA (goes top-10 in re-drafts) : 4 NHL seasons, career 0.914 SV% in regular season, 0.921 SV% in playoffs. 2 Stanley Cup Rings. Already had quite the success at an age (26 y/o) most goalies only start having a bit of success
Support players (could be made expendable if they regress or don't rebound, etc)
Colin White 21st OA (still goes 1st round in re-drafts) : 5 years contract, 23 y/o, career 0.45 PPG, only 155 NHL GP so should be a bit more productive than that going forward
Nick Paul 101st OA : 2 years contract, 25 y/o, career 0.25 PPG, only 112 NHL GP so should be a bit more productive than that going forward. But defensive forward anyway
Wild Cards (hard to expect what they'll do, they could be worth keeping or you move on to something else)
Alex Galchenyuk 3rd OA (still goes 1st round in re-drafts) : 26 y/o, career 0.58 PPG. What kind of player will he be moving forward?
Christian Wolanin 107th OA : 25 y/o, career 0.35 PPG but only 43 GP. He's a guy that never really had the chance to prove himself in the NHL : late bloomer, drafted as overager, long college route, AHL, NHL, significant injury, covid. His skillset and AHL stats (0.78 PPG in 2018-19) and even small NHL sample size suggest that there's potential here. Would be considered a pretty good prospect if he was younger, which is contextual in his case.
Artyom Zub (never drafted) : 25 y/o, KHL veteran, big wildcard, could be anything from top-4 D-man to going back to Russia in the near future.
Josh Brown 152th OA : 26 y/o, career 0.11 PPG but only 93 GP. Drafted as an overager (19 y/o), was a 6th round so long term project. Only fully graduated last year. Will never be a top player but he's the type of player that could pull a DeMelo
Stop Gap Veterans (some could potentially be re-signed)
Yevgeni Dadonov : 3 years contract, 31 y/o, 0.81 PPG since he came back to the NHL in 2017-18
Connor Brown : 3 years contract, 26 y/o, 0.61 PPG with Ottawa last year and career 0.44 PPG
Chris Tierney : 2 years contract, 26 y/o, 0.56 PPG with Ottawa the last 2 seasons
Austin Watson : 3 years contract, 28 y/o, career 0.25 PPG, pure defensive forward (almost 75% of dZS)
Artem Anisimov : 1 year contract, 32 y/o, career 0.49 PPG, I don't see him being kept beyond this year
Nikita Zaitsev : 4 years contract, 29 y/o, career 0.27 PPG, don't think he'll be there for the whole 4 years
Erik Gudbranson : 1 year contract, 28 y/o, career 0.14 PPG, I don't see him being kept beyond this year
Mike Reilly : 1 year contract, 27 y/o, career 0.26 PPG, I don't see him being kept beyond this year
Marcus Hogberg and Christian Jaros are not really veterans but hard to see them becoming long term pieces, so I have them as stop gaps until they prove otherwise.
Other Prospects : the question is how much they will he outplay their draft position, or not? Which will be long term pieces, or even building blocks? Even if they don't all hit, some will and provide quality all over the line-up.
Drake Batherson (121st OA in 2017)
Josh Norris (19th OA in 2017)
Erik Brannstrom (15th OA in 2017)
Logan Brown (11th OA in 2016)
Jacob Bernard-Docker (26th OA in 2018)
Alex Formenton (47th OA in 2017)
Shane Pinto (32nd OA in 2019)
Ridly Greig (28th OA in 2020)
Roby Jarventie (33rd OA in 2020)
Rudolfs Balcers (142th OA in 2015)
Vitali Abramov (65th OA in 2016)
Joey Daccord (199th OA in 2015)
Lassi Thomson (19th OA in 2019)
Egor Sokolov (61st OA in 2020)
Tyler Kleven (44th OA in 2020)
Filip Chlapik (48th OA in 2015)
Mads Søgaard (37th OA in 2019)
Etc
Would be ideal to start answering some questions as soon as possible (as we would be in process of doing if there was no covid), particularly regarding wild cards and prospects. With all the assets the Sens currently have, I don't think they're that far off from being a good team again.