Obiter Dicta Issue 5 - October 27, 2014 | Page 9

SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT Monday, October 27, 2014   9 Why the Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup for nearly half a century Part two of three P kenneth cheak kwan lam › staff writer rior to the cancelled 2004 to 2005 season, the Leafs had an ill-advised pattern of trading away 1st-round selections for unproven and/or unspectacular (and sometimes rental) players in order to make a run (albeit a short one at best) in the playoffs. They would also opt for band-aid solutions in the form of signing relatively-big names but pasttheir-prime unrestricted/Group III free agents (at least 31 years old) to longterm expensive contracts in order to fill roster voids on a short-term basis. For instance, Leafs Nation should remember how former General Manager John Ferguson, Jr. infamously traded away the rights to future Star Goaltender Tuukka Rask to the Boston Bruins for inconsistent counterpart Andrew Raycroft (who