Don't automatically assume that the rest of the Leafs' rebuild will all go according to plan.

It is not strange or odd that many Leaf fans were happy when Dion Phaneuf was traded to the Ottawa Senators earlier this week. This fan base can turn against their players, especially their defensemen.

Fantasy Impact – Phaneuf to Ottawa

Some like Tom Kurvers, Mike Komisarek, John-Michael Liles, and Aki Berg represented some sort of lost opportunity. There were the ones that were loved for their skills, Borje Salming and Al Iafrate, but were still chased out of town.

Last but not least, there were the scapegoats and pin cushions Larry Murphy, Tomas Kaberle, and Bryan McCabe. They were serviceable like Phaneuf, but big targets of fan disgust.

So when it was revealed that Phaneuf was gone as part of a nine-player deal, local reports got into the spirit and gave one more kick.

Mike Ziesberger started with the famous “Do you believe in miracles?” line. Steve Simmons ended with “Now the captain is gone in a deal for salary-cap room. Hardly memorable or fashionable, which is not unlike Dion Phaneuf’s time in Toronto.”

In the middle was Lance Hornby, trying to be a little bit nicer when writing that “Lamoriello said he paid no head to the anti-Phaneuf chatter around town, calling it hearsay. Still, he’s glad to have that contract off his books.”

Kind of like a 1960s pastel pink three-piece washroom. An outdated small space than can do a job, but it is not pretty or very likable. It simply has to go.

These three writers comment on how the team extinguished itself of huge contracts from the past that were burning holes with Toronto’s cap space.

Simmons adds, “Now he’s been traded away for some hope and a lot of salary-cap flexibility, two of hockey’s most powerful intangibles.”

“Let’s be clear here. When offering praise to the Maple Leafs brass for sanitizing an underachieving, dysfunctional roster, the kudos have more to do with the players shipped out than the resources acquired in return,”  writes Ziesberger.

Lamoriello indicated to Hornby, “This was a transaction that certainly wasn’t for today,” and “but transactions like this have to be made, for the reasons of staying with the plan that’s in place.”

We can understand that.

Take your fantasy rosters. If you do not feel that you’ve got pieces to build around, then why keep on doing the same thing? Time to plan for a rebuild.

Well that is simple: just get rid of your current guys for some picks/prospects and then things will be better in two or three years. Right?

Another local writer, Damien Cox, writes that there are five different phases of the NHL rebuild:

1. The Tear Down
2. Add Talent and Implement Team Identity/Philosophy
3. Gel into a .500 Team
4. Make Playoffs
5. Win Stanley Cup

Oh yeah, a rebuild is that simple. So simple.

Because no one else in the NHL, or for that matter in your fantasy pools, has ever gone through a bad rebuild.

Dave Naylor describes the impatience of the Leafs’ past 30 years. Someone gets impatient, wants to find a shortcut to success or simply does not want to believe that the team is built with shaky foundations.

The team executives are not the only ones who jump the gun. These writers, and the fans, do so too.

From Cox: “While not totally a clean slate — there’s millions of dollars in ‘dead’ money on the books and a few highly paid vets still around — the major subtracting can now end and the adding can truly begin.”

Three consecutive statements from Simmons article display the impatience:

“Sending him packing now is building from the dollar-signs out, opening roster spots and making salary maneuverings possible. The win in all this will depend on what Lamoriello does with the opening.”

“The best of all possibilities: Signing Steven Stamkos as a free agent and drafting Auston Matthews with the first pick in the NHL draft.”

“That combination would accelerate the Leafs’ rebuild exponentially and, in Lamoriello’s own words, change the plan. That would give the Leafs two centres to build around for more than a decade. That would be crazy, really, and highly unusual for the historically unlucky Leafs.”

Wow, talk about worrying about the window coverings before the home is even remotely built.

In particular I have a problem with the second comment from Simmons. Signing Stamkos is mentioned before drafting Matthews.

Please ignore that Toronto first has to win the lottery draft, but also that the draft occurs before free agency opens up and that Stamkos has to reach that point as well.

Some of the other general managers that Naylor wrote about had plans too but ultimately failed. Logic like that above shows how slippery a roof’s slope can be and how easily one’s plans can come crashing down to the ground.

There are people out there who would characterize that Shanahan is the architect, Lamoriello and staff the builders, Babcock the foreman, and the players the skilled tradesmen. The assumption is that whoever they draft, sign, or trade for will be free of any defects or blemishes and there will be an abundance to choose from.

It does not work that way. The players are the building materials and you cannot go back to the NHL store to exchange a bent nail, cracked tiles, paint that is not the right hue, or some knotty pieces of lumber.

You, as the Leafs have found out, might be able to find a buyer to take some of the materials off your hands, but you might not get full value.

That is why it is important in a rebuild to continue to do two things: 1) Keep vaporizing what you can from your current roster, and 2) Prepare for several future drafts. It will be the cheapest source of players, and if some turn out to be a bit warped, you will be able to deal with it.

While the fans will be all too happy to move along with stories of how pretty the new-look Leafs will be, they do not realize that the demolition party still has a few more hours of life left in it.