Beating the teams you should beat and racking up points there is exactly how it should be when rebuilding. God-Awful veteran teams that get up for big games against top team and then convince themselves they're only a couple of players from competing are exactly what keeps bad teams bad. 

These Leafs are going to be gangbusters by the start of the 2018 season, and they'll be increasingly fun to watch until then. 

The only problem I see coming is Chicago disease by 2019. Matthews and Marner will be up for massive  contracts and (at least) Nylander, Zaitsev, Brown, and Hyman will already have been signed for multiples of what they're making now. Having Robidas and Lupul off the the books by then won't be near enough to keep them under the cap. 

But, that's every decent team's problem. Much better problem than getting out of a bunch of old guys retirement contracts and still not smelling the playoffs.