The poor man's budget excuse stopped with the massive media revenue change last year. Now you can spend near the cap, make the playoffs, and break even or better. If you out manage the opposition, you can easily make good money.

So I partly blame Cheapo for not spending near the cap. As I have said before, adding Leddy and Boychuk like the Islanders did when they were available would have cost $9M a year less the crappy salaries we have in their place, and we would make the playoffs every without giving up a single draft choice. Same thing with the steady vets Florida has.

Murray has made the egregious errors. Greening was a dumb gamble. Phillips was a bad gamble at his sliding productivity, as was Cowen. The Cory Conacher trade was criminal. Even Ryan was a bad trade leading to a bad contract. Michalek was a bad contract. The Spezza trade was horrible.

This series of dumbness leaves us overpaying Ryan and Phaneuf by about $5M total for several years and needing to compensate elsewhere while competing against the best teams that hardly waste a dollar.

This, plus the cap underspend sinks our boat for years. We will not win anything before the end of Melnyk's turfwalking contract with the Big Guy is up. If he realizes this in time, we could do the Leafs thing, eat the dumb moves in a short term pain deal, and get an open slate while sucking for a couple of years. Or he can sell snake oil as current, and watch the stands empty.

Plan B is to add a star if he can in free agency, spend to the cap, and hope like hell the recent draft picks are the real deal. It could work, but either way, Cheapo needs to either sell or change the business plan in a hurry, before he's breathed his last breath and his legacy is abject failure. He is quickly turning the team into Roughriders part 2, and the yelling and screaming are embarassing given clearly not ready for prime time roster he ices, selling as top 5 while getting outplayed almost every night.