I dunno, I think one has to keep an eye out on what the big picture is, and that's winning the Stanley Cup, not fiscal conservativism and hard line managing for the sake of it.
I'm not happy with the way the salaries have ballooned in Toronto, and definitely pissed that our core has squandered a lot of their careers with underperforming in the playoffs. More financial discipline from the Leafs over the years would have helped things.
But you also have to recognize the Avs won a cup with their Mackinnon, Makar, Rantanen triumvirate and were dead in the water and completely dysfunctional until at least 2017, so I wouldn't have cut bait on a key figure in such a special winning recipe. As an Avs fan, I would be pissed off, and not celebrating that Joe Sakic chose to be a hardo company man on this one. But they also have a cup and can ride off into the sunset mission accomplished already, so the stakes are totally different.