Ken Campbell says the Toronto Maple Leafs are going down the road of the Penguins and Lightning by trading many futures for a chance at the Cup. Will the Leafs have a Cup banner to show for it?

On Thursday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs dealt a third- and sixth-round pick to bolster their blueline with Ilya Lyubushkin. 

Yes, they were that desperate because they were losing defensemen on an already thin blueline, but they also picked up a guy whose under-the-hood numbers are among the worst in the league.

And so it goes for the Maple Leafs, who have been dispensing with draft picks as though they’re Pez. In fact, they won’t be picking until the fifth round of the 2025 draft, and in the first three rounds of the next two drafts, they have a total of two picks. Stay tuned because their first-rounder from 2024 is still in play.

This, simply put, is a recipe for disaster. Great teams do it all the time, and they have banners hanging in their arenas to show for it. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning are entering their days of reckoning, but their fans can always look into the rafters and remember the good times.

The Maple Leafs? Well, they haven’t even approached the success of the two aforementioned teams, but someday, they’ll be on exactly the same path. You deal futures to supplement the present, and you pay for it down the road. Guaranteed. The only question now is whether the Leafs can somehow become the Penguins or the Lightning, or are they doomed to become the San Jose Sharks, a team that came close and now has nothing to show for it.

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