I think it's worse now.
They over achieved back in the days of Tyler Bozak as their 1C. Kessel and company provided us with some entertainment, but nobody considered them to be a contender. And, quite certainly, nobody pretended they were a contender.
Fast forward to today's Leafs and it's just the opposite. We were promised results via the Shanaplan, we paid through the nose to get the best coach, Lou came in and controlled the media- who were actually positive for two seasons, and we were gifted our franchise saviour in Auston Matthews.
The media kept reminding us how "this time it's different". We were actually building with youth, from within our own organization. We were chock full of promising young stars and potential. We even accepted the promised "5 years of pain" because we'd been convinced it would lead to great things. We all bought into the process because we were tired of bandaid solutions and we all wanted to build a true contender.
Then, out of the blue, Shanahan handed the keys to Dubas. He blew $11 million on a centre we didn't need and signed players to ridiculous, undeserved, and unmanageable contracts. He put us in such a terrible cap situation that he returned to bandaid solutions in his quest to find players who could actually perform in the playoffs, all whilst trading away all of our future draft picks and prospects. All of this in exchange for winning only one playoff series during his 5 year run. He may be fine now, but the damage he did still affects the team today.
Shanahan making Dubas the GM was the beginning of the end- it's been quite embarrassing since then. I have no idea how Shanahan hasn't been fired.
