Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 3.12

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A stunning 3-0 victory on November 17th against the Ottawa Senators and a strong first forty minutes against the Boston Bruins the following Tuesday led many to start suggesting the Maple Leafs had finally found their recipe for success and had turned their season around. Hahaha, over the remaining seven periods last week, the Maple Leafs quickly corrected those misguided notions with arguably their worst stretch of hockey since Paul Maurice’s tenure as head coach began.

Now in the midst of a three game losing streak the Maple Leafs have fallen to second last spot in the Eastern Conference standings and improvement doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. The power play is still anemic – third worst in the NHL. The offense, which had been an early season strength of the Maple Leafs has all but dried up. Jason Blake sits seventh in the NHL in shots taken but has a mere two goals to show for his efforts. Nik Antropov, Matt Stajan, Alex Steen and Darcy Tucker have a combined four goals in the month of November. Tomas Kaberle is starting to look like Bryan McCabe when handling the puck. Speaking of McCabe, he now holds a team low -10 in the plus minus department. There’s really nothing else to say about Andrew Raycroft other than he isn’t getting much better.

Right now the majority of the team, Mats Sundin notwithstanding, is in a slump. Despite a terrible week that saw them pick no points, it’s nothing a good stretch of three or four wins in a row won’t cure. The Maple Leafs only sit three points out of the final playoff position and as a result, it’s important to curtail this losing streak immediately. If they go on a seven or eight game losing streak as they have in each of the past two season, the iron door will be shut on the Maple Leafs playoff hopes for a third consecutive season. But hey, all that was just rigamarole.