It was just three years ago that the Maple Leafs' roster was a depressing sight to behold. They were not only the worst team in the league, they were putting a dreadful product on the ice that lacked any sort of appeal and impact talent.

No player on the team had more than 45 points. P.A. Parenteau (now retired) and Leo Komarov (now overpaid by the Islanders) were two of their top three leading scorers. Peter Holland, Brad Boyes and Dion Phaneuf were all among their top 10. William Nylander appeared in just 20 games that season. Mitch Marner had yet to make his NHL debut. They had not yet won draft lottery and did not even have Auston Matthews in the organization yet.

The young prospects and potential top draft pick offered hope, but it still seemed like it was lightyears from becoming a reality.

Thanks to some smart drafting, patience, a little bit of luck (the draft lottery is far from a guarantee) and being the one team in the NHL that had the power to attract the rare superstar free agent, it has not taken the Maple Leafs long to once again emerge as, what should be, one of the superpowers in the league.

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Matthews, Nylander and Marner have all lived up to the hype and expectations from when they were drafted, and on Sunday, the first day of the 2018 free agent signing period, the Maple Leafs landed John Tavares on a seven-year, $77 million contract. Given that the former Islanders captain reportedly turned down (significantly) more money from the Sharks, it seems pretty clear Toronto was the only team in the league that had the ability to lure him away from Brooklyn.

All of that has given the Maple Leafs an embarrassment of riches at the forward position.

How good is their current core? With Tavares now locked in, the Leafs' roster boasts five of the top 65 players in points per game (minimum 120 games) over the past two seasons in Tavares, Matthews, Nylander, Marner and Nazem Kadri. The Stanley Cup champion Capitals (Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov and T.J. Oshie) and Jets (Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, Patrik Laine and Nikolaj Ehlers) each have four. No other team has more than three.

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You win with superstars and impact players, and it is arguable that right now no team in the league has more of them than the Maple Leafs. What makes them especially scary is that Tavares and Kadri are the “old” players out of the bunch, both turning 28 this season. Matthews, Nylander and Marner are all 22 or younger, meaning they are now just entering their prime years. For as good as the kids have already proven to be, they probably still have their best, most productive hockey ahead of them.

The potential combinations that coach Mike Babcock has at his disposal are as imposing as any other team in the league.

There is no reason to believe that the Matthews-Nylander duo will not be left in place at the top of the lineup, especially given the way they have just steamrolled over teams during their first two full seasons in the league. In more than 1,500 minutes of 5-on-5 hockey since the start of the 2016-17 season, the Maple Leafs have controlled 53 percent of the total shot attempts and outscored teams by a 76-47 margin with both Matthews and Nylander on the ice.

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Babcock said on Sunday that he envisions a Tavares-Marner pairing on the second line, while Kadri — who has developed into a fierce shutdown center with plenty of offensive punch in his own right — gets to anchor the third line. When you add in the likes of Zach Hyman, Conor Brown, Kasperi Kapanen and Patrick Marleau (still a 25-goal scorer at this point in his career), it is an astonishing amount of offensive talent.

It also creates questions beyond which All-Star gets to play alongside which All-Star.

The big ones that are going to get asked are: 1.) How can they possibly keep all of these high-end players together under the salary cap? And 2.) Which one can they trade to fill their weaknesses on the defense?

The answers: 1.) All of them, and 2.) None of them.

The most irrational fear in the NHL when it comes to building a team in the salary-cap era is worrying about paying too much money to a team’s best players, or that it is impossible to keep them all in place. This usually applies to the people covering and following the sport, more so than the people actually building the teams, but it is still a talking point around any team that pays a small number of players big money.

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If anything, the teams that win the Stanley Cup in the salary-cap era have illustrated just how imperative it is to not only keep those players, but paying almost whatever it takes to keep them.

The salary cap outlook for the Maple Leafs this season is an encouraging one because they still have Matthews and Marner on their entry-level deals. Nylander is a restricted free agent and will get a significant raise, but even with Tavares’ contract in place, they have more than enough salary cap space to comfortably get him in.

The concern is going to come next season and beyond, when they also have to pay Matthews and Nylander.

A conservative estimate for Matthews, Nylander and Marner is that it is probably going to cost at least $24-25 million in salary cap space per year to keep them (assuming at least $7 million each for Nylander and Marner; perhaps as much as $10 million for Matthews). Combined with Tavares, that would be at least $34-35 million going to just four players.

Seems like a lot, right? Seems impossible to build a contending team around them, right?

Not exactly.

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Consider that the 2017-18 Capitals had more than $30 million going to Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby on a significantly lower cap.

Or that the 2015-16 and 2016-17 Penguins had $32.2 million going to Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Phil Kessel on even lower salary caps than that one.

Or that the 2014-15 Blackhawks had more than $24 million going to Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa and Duncan Keith on an even lower salary cap than all of the previous three.

You get the idea.

The other thing those teams had in common is that they didn’t trade from their core to fix other areas. There is a reason high-end talent rarely changes teams in the NHL (unless, of course, you are talking about a team being run by Peter Chiarelli). It is nearly impossible to find and acquire said talent, and when teams get it they hold on to it for as long as they possibly can. It is also worth keeping in mind that after the 2019-10 season, the Maple Leafs will have close to $9 million coming off the books when the contracts for Marleau and Matt Martin run out, while there is always the possibility that a player like Nikita Zaitsev ($4.5 million salary cap hit) could be dealt.

In other words, it is all very manageable.

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There is also another question that is going to get asked here: How much do the Maple Leafs really need to do to their defense? There is no question that it could use some upgrades, but does it require such an upgrade that they would have to part with one of their franchise forwards to fix it? Jake Gardiner had a dreadful performance in the Maple Leafs’ season-ending Game 7 loss in Boston, but that does not define him as a player. He is good. As is Morgan Rielly.

I’ve always been of the belief that a top-pairing, 28-minute-per-night defenseman who can play in every situation is a necessity to win the Stanley Cup. But if recent NHL history has shown us anything, it’s that there is more than one way to accomplish things.

The Penguins won the 2016-17 Stanley Cup without Kris Letang. The expansion Golden Knights were in the Stanley Cup Final this year with a mostly patchwork group on defense. The Capitals had a pretty good defense and invested a lot of money in the blue line, but they didn’t exactly have a Chris Pronger or Scott Niedermayer or Drew Doughty or Erik Karlsson at the top of it.

If you are a part of the “Toronto should trade William Nylander or Mitch Marner for a top defenseman” brigade, let me ask you one question: How many examples of such a trade taking place and working out as planned can you really think of? The Ryan Johansen-for-Seth Jones swap certainly stands out, but that was really only made possible because Nashville was a team that had multiple top-pairing defenseman to trade.

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Like top-line scorers, most teams are not trading that kind of a defenseman unless a unique set of circumstances presents itself. It is more likely to backfire than accomplish what you hope it will. Nobody wants to be the team that trades Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson.

What all the recent teams that made the Cup Final without that sort of front-line defender had in common was balanced scoring throughout their lineup that made it difficult for opponents to match up against and strong goaltending.

The Maple Leafs definitely have the balanced scoring, which means a lot of their success (or failure) will come down to Frederik Andersen in net. Andersen is a fine goalie and is consistently just a touch above league average when it comes to his performance. The biggest issue the Maple Leafs might have with him, however, is that they have kind of run him into the ground the past two years and probably have not managed his minutes enough so that he is not completely burned out when it comes to the playoffs.

In the end, the Maple Leafs are not without their questions, and a Stanley Cup in the immediate future is far from a guarantee (that is just the nature of professional sports, where only one team has its season end with a victory). Still, having the amount of talent the Leafs have at the top of their roster certainly puts them in the discussion and gives them as good of a chance as any other team in the league. They had the rare chance to add one of the best players in the league and they would have been crazy to let that pass them by.

Assemble the high-end talent when you can, trim around the edges where you need to, and worry about the rest later.