With the Leafs set to embark on a full-scale rebuild, the most pressing question among Toronto fans is simple: How long until the Leafs can contend.

Re-building is not for the faint of heart. It takes plenty of years of being utterly terrible before the first signs of tangible progress, and sometimes plenty more after that before reaching the ultimate prize (just ask the St. Louis Blues).

To get a better understanding of just how long a rebuild might take in Toronto I looked at three of the past four Stanley Cup winners to see how they did it. I excluded the Boston Bruins because they didn't really rebuild, they succeeded in pulling off the magical re-tool on the fly, in large part because they made the greatest free agent singing ever (Zdeno Chara) and lucked into two franchise goalies (in one case the luck was having a team as stupid as the Leafs to trade with). Basically, the Bruins model is not easily replicable.

For the Kings, Blackhawks, and Penguins, I defined the start of the rebuild as the first season in which they flamed out after having been in the playoffs or at least in playoff contention for a number of years. If you're in the playoffs or at least close enough to have a shot late in the season (as the Kings were from 2003-2005) you aren't rebuilding. It's not until a team drops dramatically in the standings that they typically commit to a full rebuild.

So how did they do it?

With the Leafs mired in another death spiral, the core is coming under increased scrutiny. The major question in Toronto is whether you can win with Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf.

It's certainly possible. And you have to look no further than the team who has won two of the last five Stanley Cups.

Dion Phaneuf is on the verge of signing a seven-year extension with the Leafs, valued at $7 million per year. The cap hit comes with major sticker shock, but it's a deal the Leafs needed to make.

After signing Phil Kessel to a franchise record 8-year, $64 million contract to start the season, the next most important item for Dave Nonis is deciding what to do with Dion Phaneuf. If he decides to sign the soon-to-be free agent, it won't be cheap.

Looking at the Leafs' stats after the season is a little strange as the lockout caused far lower totals than I'm accustomed to seeing. I'm used to thinking that 30 goals is a pretty solid season for a sniper and it's hard to quickly determine what that 30-goal mark would be during a 48-game season. So to get a better understanding of what type of season the individual Leafs players just had I prorated their 48-game totals to their corresponding 82-game numbers.

The one major caveat of this table is that the missing 34 games of the season would not necessarily play out exactly the same as the other 48, so simply prorating players' 48-game stats over 82 games isn't exactly a precise measure of what an 82-game season would look like. For example, Joffrey Lupul, a career 11.55% shooter, was probably not going to continue shooting 26% over a full year.

Regardless, this table is a quick and dirty look at what the Leafs might have produced in the alternate universe where Gary Bettman didn't flush away the first 34 games of the season.

	Lockout-Shortened 2013 Season				Stats Over Full Season
	GP	G	A	Pts	GP	G	A	Pts
Phil Kessel	48	20	32	52	82	34	55	89
Nazem Kadri	48	18	26	44	82	31	44	75
James van Riemsdyk	48	18	14	32	82	31	24	55
Cody Franson	45	4	25	29	77	7	43	50
Dion Phaneuf	48	9	19	28	82	15	32	48
Tyler Bozak	46	12	16	28	79	21	27	48
Nikolai Kulemin	48	7	16	23	82	12	27	39
Clarke MacArthur	40	8	12	20	68	14	21	34
Joffrey Lupul	16	11	7	18	27	19	12	31
Jay McClement	48	8	9	17	82	14	15	29
Mikhail Grabovski	48	9	7	16	82	15	12	27
Carl Gunnarrson	37	1	14	15	63	2	24	26
Matt Frattin	25	7	6	13	43	12	10	22
John-Michael Liles	32	2	9	11	55	3	15	19
Leo Komorov	42	4	5	9	72	7	9	15
Mark Fraser	45	0	8	8	77	0	14	14
Mike Kostka	35	0	8	8	60	0	14	14
Ryan O'Byrne	42	2	4	6	72	3	7	10
Frazer McClaren	36	3	2	5	62	5	3	9
Colton Orr	44	1	3	4	75	2	5	7
Jake Gardiner	12	0	4	4	21	0	7	7
Korbinian Holzer	22	2	1	3	38	3	2	5
Ryan Hamilton	10	0	2	2	17	0	3	3
Joe Colborne	5	0	0	0	9	0	0	0
Mike Komisarek	4	0	0	0	7	0	0	0