Somewhere back at the beginning of the season, the Toronto Star did a profile on new General Manager Lou Lamoriello. One of their biggest concerns was that Lamoriello would not properly tear down the team to rebuild it again: "Lou Lamoriello is an impatient general manager. Mike Babcock can lose his patience with losing."

Luckily Lou's larger point was never lost, and even at the start of the season, he told The Star, "We have to be realistic, not idealistic, and make sure whatever decisions are made are made for the right reasons of the total picture. The big picture. I don't think you'll see us get off course no matter what."

And boy is Lou on course, continuing Brendan Shanahan's work during the summer. According to General Fanager, Leafs are closing in on 28 picks, and possibly more by trade deadline on Monday. Since this summer, the Leafs have traded the following contracts that they had in 2014-2015:

Phil Kessel, Tyler Biggs, Tim Erixon, Shawn Matthias, Roman Polak, Nick Spaling, Dion Phaneuf, Matt Frattin, Casey Bailey, Ryan Rupert, Cody Donaghey, Richard Panik, James Reimer, and Jeremy Morin.

They've given up surprisingly few draft picks in all of these dealings -- a 2nd to Pittsburgh, a conditional 3rd in 2017 to Detroit in exchange for Babcock, and a conditional 3rd to New Jersey in 2018 in return for Lamoriello.

In return, since the beginning of the season, the Leafs have amassed soon-to-be free agents, a rental goaltender, prospects, and a new front office, including:

Kasperi Kapanen, Nick Spaling, Scott Harrington, Colin Smith, Raffi Torres, Jared Cowen, Colin Greening, Milan Michalek, Tobias Lindberg, Alex Stalock, Ben Smith, Mike Babcock, and Lou Lamoriello.

Image created by @3rdPeriodSuits and used with his permission.

The Leafs also amassed a lot of picks through 2018, 28 of them in all:

2016: two 1st (one of these is conditional on Pittsburgh reaching the postseason), one 2nd, two 3rd, two 4th, two 5th, two 6th (St Louis condition met), one 7th.
2017: one 1st, three 2nd (one of these is conditional on Pittsburgh reaching the postseason), one 4th, one 5th, one 6th, one 7th.
2018: one 1st, one 2nd, one extra 3rd or one extra 4th (depending on whether San Jose reaches the cup final), one 5th, one 6th, one 7th.

And that means Leafs prospects are going to stay interesting for a while to come!

(With thanks to General Fanager and 3rdPeriodSuits for letting us use their tweets!)