Late in Cliff Fletcher's career as Leafs GM, he might some terrible deals that hand cuffed the Leafs for a few years. Of course Cliff thought the could out trade everyone, every time. And Pat Quinn was a terrible GM, and only because the Leafs had money could they mask some his big mistakes.
Then the owners let an idiot child take over as GM, John Ferguson. Completely out of his league. Then the ego and incompetent of Brian, The Brain" Burke runs the shows with his dozen of yes men. They loved being NHL executives but hated to work. And then since no one else was around, Dave Nonis took over.
If the Leafs had been in English Soccer...they would have gone from the Premier League, to the First Division to the Second Division, to the Third Division and are only now trying to work themselves out of total mismanagement of the club for decades.

Only in Leafs eyes was Pogge seen as an elite goalie.

Neat visualization, even though some of your causes/effects don't really line up, such as how not trading Phaneuf to Ottawa prevents them from giving him an albatross of a contract 2 years prior.

He doesn't get that albatross of a contract because they would of had Hamilton, Reilly, and Gardiner on the team at that time and hopefully realize that Phaneuf would not have to be the guy for very long.

Why are there no ramification for dumping salary of Horton, Robidas, and Lupul?

Like what draft pick compensation? Wasn't overly concerned with that part of it.

Let's not pick on the Leafs. Horton is truly on LTIR. That was the reason the CBJ made the trade. His salary "is not insured" so the Leafs get his LTIR (which all teams would have got) but Leafs pay out of pocket his 27m (or what ever it is in salary). The reason the Leafs made the trade was to get cap relief.
Robidas. This site doesn't get into all the details of the cap accurately (IMO). Robidas was signed as age 35+ so the Leafs are on the hook for his salary and salary cap for the length of his contract. So it's cap hit of 3,000,000 -925,000 for a cap hit 2,075,000. Lupul: I'm surprised he is not medically cleared yet. Well if he isn't cleared, the Leafs get full LTIR relief. If and when he comes back, he will be buried so his cap hit will be h 5,250,000 - 925,000 for a cap hit of 4.325m. IMO, Lupul knows he no longer is NHL good (his body is worn out) so he doesn't want to get medically cleared cause if he was he would be riding the buses in the minors. So as long as he is "unfit" he can live in Toronto or Malibu.

Maybe you should be. I don't think it's as easy as you make it out to be to dump $13.55m of literally useless salary.

You are correct that the armchair-gm app does make some minor simplifications, one being how LTIR is presented; we do have updates in mind to make it even more accurate.


One also is buried 35+ contracts; they do not get 950k relief as your post indicates, it is $0 if it is the first year of their contract, and $100k if the 2nd or later year of their contract. Robidas buried only has a relief of $100k

All that and the leafs still finish at the bottom of the standings to draft Willy, Marner and Matthews??

Make that:

Willy(7) ---> Pastrnak if they scouted well, but more likely, Nick Ritchie as Burkie might have not lost his job.
MM (4) ----> Konecny if they scouted will, but more likely, Lawson Crouse or similar
Matthews(1) ---> pft. Bellows maybe?