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Toronto coach Mike Babcock declared they were "miles ahead of where we were," even as his team sat in the NHL's basement.

Brendan Shanahan waxed eloquently about getting the ship "turned in the right direction," despite the fact they had actually dropped three spots in the standing.

And Lou Lamoriello? Well he isn't big on grand pronouncements, but he was smiling, too.

The Toronto Maple Leafs laid to rest their 30th-place season on Sunday afternoon, and it was as positive and enthusiastic a eulogy as we may ever witness for a last-place hockey team. Those in charge – the coach, president and GM – accomplished what they had wanted to, they explained, and the players had bought in.

They added picks and prospects. They dumped veterans and potential malcontents. They lost a lot of hockey games – 53 of 82 – but that was also part of the plan.

In fact, simply having a plan that made sense was a vast improvement over where the Leafs have been in previous years, pretending water was about to become wine.

"This year more than ever I feel as though we had some direction," said defenceman Morgan Rielly, who has quickly become the articulate voice of the roster despite his youth. "That really goes a long way in terms of motivating players to want to work hard to get back here in the best shape as possible and have a good year next year. We know where we're going."

According to Babcock, where they're going is up. The question is when.

"I know we're going to get there," he said when asked about the playoffs. "I just don't know what the timeline is. We're just going to keep getting better."

Understandably, all this optimism around a last-place team drives those outside of the market nuts. But what the Leafs did this season was needed and necessary. The NHL has become a league where there are zero quick fixes, even for the richest of the rich. You need homegrown talent to contend, and Toronto didn't have a hope of progress without a year to reset a broken, dysfunctional roster.

For successfully seeing that and hitting the self-destruct button, management gets a few kudos. But it will also be completely meaningless unless they continue to make smart decisions – smarter ones than those they're up against.

If the appropriate analogy for rebuilding this franchise is the demolition and reconstruction of a house, this Leafs season was simply cleaning away the asbestos-filled rubble and finding some nice plywood.

Goodbye Dion Phaneuf. Hello Tobias Lindberg.

It's what comes next that determines what the house is, and whether the Leafs are the next Chicago Blackhawks, New York Islanders or – God forbid – Edmonton Oilers.

The Leafs have had several high picks already, and they need some of them – including whoever they get in the top four this June – to develop into difference makers. They also need to keep unearthing Zach Hymans, Nikita Soshnikovs and Connor Carricks – the vital young depth of any good team – for nothing.

They need a goalie. They need a top line centre. They need someone to help Rielly and Jake Gardiner hold down the top four on the blueline. Solving all of that in one off-season isn't plausible, but Babcock's pronouncement that the Leafs will get better is a safe one.

The Leafs are coming out of a season in which they dressed 46 players – including many who won't have NHL careers – and didn't put a priority on winning. Next season won't be nearly as messy. Babcock will have the group he's expected to mould into something right from training camp. They'll be young and motivated. They won't need to read the nameplates above the dressing room stalls to know who they're sitting next to and may even play with the same linemates and partners for more than a few games.

The Leafs also won't be tied to many bad contracts or coerced into making bad deals. They have a top coach, a first-place farm team and upper management who seem bright, patient and resolved to do the right thing.

It's not hard to see them finding another six or seven wins in all that and going from the basement into the mushy lower middle of the NHL standings. Then keep building from there.

The Leafs may be dead last, but they do appear to finally have some substance behind the optimism.

"I like the position we're in better than a lot of teams in the National Hockey League," Babcock said. "A lot."

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