As always, the two players were never the problem with the tank, it was what they did to the roster to make sure they could be the worst team in the league for 730 consecutive days
Doing that on purpose is beyond Pejorative Slured, they had the best net offseason a team could ever put together in the real world in 2015 and it made them an 81 point team, and their depth has literally never stopped lagging the rest of the NHL
It makes everything else ten times more difficult and important to nail exactly right
By now, of course, competence would have us competing, but the tank was never going to be a smooth trajectory to winning. At least Toronto's tank team was damn near a positive possession team, they were building a foundation of real hockey while losing for exactly 82 games, the Sabres purposefully put on a 30% every stat clinic every night and traded away anyone that might impede on that effort