Dion Phaneuf was always a bit of a mirage. He was a SportsCentre player. It became painfully clear the day he was traded to the Maple Leafs that he had a reputation that was, in no way, based on watching him play. Instead, he had a reputation based on watching SportsCentre.
If you didn't watch Flames games, and instead just saw hilights, you saw a lot of big Dion Phaneuf hits and lots of scoring and the impression was, this guy was a tough bruising defender with top end offensive skill.
The day he was dealt to Toronto, the threads here were filled with tons of Maple Leaf fans that thought they had "stolen" Dion Phaneuf from Calgary and that he was star defensemen.
The reality, of course, was quite different. If you watched Phaneuf, instead of just seeing the hilites, you saw that in order to deliver the big hit that you saw on SportsCentre, Phaneuf was way out of position. You also missed that he went for three other big hits that he missed that led to odd-man rushes. His offensive skills also proved to be a lot more limited than the first appeared. He never thought the game very well and was never a creative player. Outside of the power play, he rarely created offense and was prone to many brain cramps when he did try to move the puck offensively.
It became clear, fairly quickly, that the Emperor Had No Clothes here in Toronto (though he did still have many vocal supporters that continued to claim he was a #1 defensemen right up until his trade when, strangely, he became terrible and overpaid.)