Favourite Team
Toronto Maple Leafs
2nd Favourite Team
Edmonton Oilers

This is the exact opposite of a rebuild.

oh wow, the leafs gut their depth to replace it with worse depth and get 15 games of a player they dont need.

Makes more sense now

The reason BUF has failed is because they sign bad contracts when they shouldn't, and they draft players that will be "ready" at different intervals (which results in them trading away good prospects for "ready" NHLers). I'm biased more towards my third favorite team here, which are the Nashville Predators, and arguably, that's the worst trade for this rebuild. But the focus here is to take on expensive bad contracts. Why? Because you'll get tons of picks back for nothing, and compared to cheap bad contracts, they don't take up as many roster spots, so that the kids get a chance to play. All the prospects I'm accumulating will be ready in 2-3 years time, and during that time, their contracts are cheap, which balances out the bad contracts to fit under the cap. By years 2 and 3, the kids should be playing on the top lines, and the bad contracts traded away if they have a rebound season (Johansen, Duchene). What will suck is that the "cheap years" of your current prospects are essentially wasted, but that's also why you're loading up on 2021 and 2022 draft picks.