Hmm, the OTPP owned the Leafs starting in 2003, and there has been a salary cap since 2005. Are you saying the Leafs weren't spending at the cap from 2005 onward? Or are you saying they should have been spending more money outside of player contracts?

I'm saying they should be spending like Steinbrenner every single year and even paying a luxury tax if necessary, because they're pretty much going to make it back.

If you have a decent team, you're never going to get a Crosby or McDavid via the draft, so you have to at least have the semblance of trying to put a contender in place every year to be attractive to the best free agents.

In my mind, attractiveness to free agents is a combination of performance and an explicit willingness to spend money to fix shortcomings. Babcock, Kessel and Phaneuf are not enough (in my opinion) to make the Leafs a legit contender. They need at least two more elite players (including a top 3 goalie) to make that happen.

Can you imagine what would happen if the Leafs won a cup? The heads of the over 4 million people in the GTA would probably explode. And right after that, you'd have massive spending on merch, etc.

> I'm saying they should be spending like Steinbrenner every single year and even paying a luxury tax if necessary, because they're pretty much going to make it back.

Well yeah, that'd be great if they were in the MLB where it's a Luxury Tax instead of a salary cap. But unfortunately they're a hockey team, and so are in the NHL where there's a salary cap. You can't, by league rules, simply spend more than the cap. So how exactly do you suggest they "spend like Steinbrenner"?

Can a team still send expensive low performing players to the minors to get them off the cap? They'd still be eating salary (which would be spending like Steinbrenner). I wouldn't be surprised if there were other ways for the richer teams to game the cap because they can afford to eat the expense.

It's fairly difficult. Sending a player down means exposing him to waivers (meaning another team can claim his contract). Now, that might be good in some circumstances, but in general you don't want to lose a player with no compensation. The highest player contracts also have clauses which can prevent being moved or traded (i.e. the player would have to agree being sent to the minors).

One tool they can use is the Injured Reserve, which allows GMs to backfill a long-term injury with players of equal or lesser value without contributing to the cap. This is what the Leafs' GM Nonis used to free up cap space by trading Clarkson to the Blue Jackets for Nathan Horton, for example. And even then Clarkson had to waive his no-trade clause (which he was classy enough to do).

that's interesting, I wasn't familiar with the history of the Pension Plan's ownership of the team

seems if the teams current woes are mostly due to poor managment, hiring the best (or at least best paid) coach is a pretty good start, especially considering that they apparently gave him an 8 year leash