Wasn't it that he was healthy but put on LTIR anyway? I can't remember specifically but everyone assumed he was fine because he had a whole offseason to recover (his knee I believe).
I even remember Lupul was saying he was healthy and able to play but the team wouldn't let him his final season. Then days later he had to retract that statement.
"Robidas said he had been nursing an exhibition-game injury to his right knee, part of the twice-broken leg that caused him so much grief in previous NHL stops in Dallas and Anaheim.
“I couldn’t do it,” he said of continuing to play. “I had two surgeries, the fracture, two screws in there … there was a lot happening with that right leg.”
Robidas’s first season with the Leafs had been cut short by a severe shoulder injury, though he’d had a positive effect on young defencemen Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly. Robidas disappeared from day-to-day life in Leafland after the knee issue, though it was known he had permission from the club to undergo part of his recovery at home in the Montreal area where his children live.
“It was not an easy year (to be in limbo), but I’d had my fair share of injuries, surgeries and rehab. The last injury was tough and my body can’t keep up. When you can’t play, that’s how it goes. Things don’t don’t always go your way, so it was a chance to stand back and take care of my body, reflect on all those years I played. I was lucky, I was a smaller guy (for a defenceman), but it caught up to me.
“It was sad to not fulfill the whole contract. I wanted to help the Leafs, but there is not much you can do when your body breaks down.”
He says he gave the knee ample time to respond and it never did, to the point where he says it still hurts to even kick a soccer ball in the back yard with his daughter.
“I can live normally, but there are things i can’t do.”"
He was done. As for Lupul, he went through a league-conducted physical and failed. He just had a hard time accepting it was over. But he came to terms with it eventually, and there are articles and quotes from him acknowledging how very done he was.
The Robidas Island thing was really just a funny joke, and at one point it exploded and got a mind of its own; helped by people attempting to use it for their narratives.