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It could fairly be depicted as a seller’s market this past deadline season, but only in the context of cap uncertainty going forward, with the big unknowns of whether the players will opt for the escalator and where the upper limit might track with the strength of the Canadian dollar.

The result? A heavy majority of deals around the deadline featured expiring contracts or at the most one more year of term on the player’s contract.

See for yourself:

2015 Expiring2016 expiringBeyond
Korbinian Holzer (UFA)Rene Bourque (UFA)James Wisniewski (UFA 2017)
Eric Brewer (UFA)Maxime Talbot (UFA)David Clarkson (UFA 2021)
Sven Baertschi (RFA)Ben Lovejoy (UFA)Nathan Horton (UFA 2020)
Chris Stewart (UFA)Chad Johnson (UFA)Tyler Myers (2020)
Torrey Mitchell (UFA)Ben Smith (UFA)Evander Kane (2019)
Olli Jokinen (UFA)Braydon Coburn (UFA)Zach Bogosian (2019)
Joakim Lindstrom (UFA)Radko Gudas (RFA)
Jordan Leopold (UFA)Keith Yandle (UFA)
Cory Conacher (RFA)Devante Smith Pelly (RFA)
Dustin Jeffrey (UFA)Jiri Sekac (RFA)
Michal Neuvirth (UFA)
Ian Cole (RFA)
Robert Bortuzzo (RFA)
Tyler Kennedy (UFA)
Marek Zidlicky (UFA)
Andrew Desjardins (UFA)
Zybnek Michalek (UFA)
Brian Flynn (RFA)
Jeff Petry (UFA)
Lee Stempniak (UFA)
Erik Cole (UFA)
James Sheppard (UFA)
John Moore (RFA)
Curtis Glencross (UFA)
Antoine Vermette (UFA)
Tomas Fleischmann (UFA)
Tim Gleason (UFA)
Jack Hillen (UFA)
Kimmo Timonen (UFA)
Jaromir Jagr (UFA)
Adam Cracknell (UFA)
Andrej Sekera (UFA)
Daniel Winnik (UFA)
Jiri Tlusty (UFA)
Sean Bergenheim (UFA)
Cody Franson (UFA)
Mike Santorelli (UFA)
Jhonas Enroth (UFA)
Drew Stafford (UFA)

Among those deals involving a contract with term — the exceptional Clarkson for Horton swap, Wisniewski has just two seasons left, and the once in a blue moon blockbuster that was the Kane deal.

The probability of Dion Phaneuf or Phil Kessel moving going into the deadline, if the Leafs had any designs on getting decent value, was next to nil. While a few Detroit rumours stoked the fires on the former, the circumstances were the circumstances. The Red Wings and Ducks, said to be the hardest in on Dion, grabbed a couple of right-handers with minimal commitment contractually at the cost of mid-level picks.

Offloading David Clarkson’s contract was certainly more than we expected. The sheer magnitude of what (as close to as possible) eliminating the Clarkson cap hit does for the team’s financial flexibility for the next half-decade-plus should not be underestimated. It feels like a simple subtraction of a bad error with nothing (of use) coming back, but the benefits of it are tenfold, even in the short term alone. The Leafs don’t feel obligated to help the player rehabilitate an unsalvageable career with PP minutes and decent linemates. The Leafs salary structure falls back into a more reasonable line. There’s no concerns with getting Bernier (if they opt to keep) or Kadri under contract. And, most relevant to yesterday’s proceedings, it affords the Leafs patience when seeking an appropriate return for their best defenceman and best forward instead of accepting 75 cents on the dollar.

Maybe the Leafs and Wings revisit this possibility in entirely different circumstances in the summer. If the Wings lose out early and feel their defensive depth let them down, what then?

A deal of one of Tyler Bozak or Joffrey Lupul might have satisfied the fanbase a little, but, again, term and question marks are replete with those two and the Leafs are going to have better luck under the summer cap, you have to figure.

The one exception to this thinking (minimal movement of the core pieces at the deadline being OK) is that draft picks are usually held closer to the chest when draft day is approaching. It shouldn’t be too difficult to add a 2nd round pick, but it will be more difficult in June than it was yesterday. And first round picks, even late ones, suddenly become a commodity akin to gold.

In the end, this is the great contradiction in losing your mind about not enough core pieces being shipped out yesterday – the entire idea behind selling these pieces and committing to ‘D&D’ (draft and development) is predicated on the virtue of patience as the Leafs “do the rebuild right this time.” The Leafs decide to hold onto some good players for 20 more games in hopes of a better package in a few months, or even sometime next season, and we’re getting upset? This somehow doesn’t give me confidence the patience is at a level some (not all) proclaim. The scored-Earth rebuild on an ASAP-basis was a flawed premise to begin with seeing as these things, unfortunately, take far longer than we’d like if the GM wants to avoid setting the club back further.

This wasn’t intended as a defense of Shanahan, Nonis and Dubas’ work. It’s more intended as a check on expectations, and as a rumination on whether some Leafs fans fully understand the realities of what they’re committing to. We don’t have enough to go on yet with the (mostly) new regime, and while I like the subtle creativity in taking back contracts to buy picks, selling off the obvious pieces for futures is the easy part. We’re not going to know about the hard part –building it back up again – for quite a while.

In the short term, the current group is looking quite capable of tanking out the stretch anyway.

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Alec Brownscombe is the founder and editor of MapleLeafsHotStove.com, where he has written daily about the Leafs since September of 2008. He's published five magazines on the team entitled "The Maple Leafs Annual" with distribution in Chapters and newsstands across the country. He also co-hosted "The Battle of the Atlantic," a weekly show on TSN1200 that covered the Leafs and the NHL in-depth. Alec is a graduate of Trent University and Algonquin College with his diploma in Journalism. In 2014, he was awarded Canada's Best Hockey Blogger honours by Molson Canadian. You can contact him at alec.brownscombe@mapleleafshotstove.com.