Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 5.20

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If there is one area in which the Toronto Maple Leafs have been proficient, at least recently, it has been finding new ways to lose hockey games. The mark of any good team is one that can find ways to win hockey games even when not at their best. Throughout the course of a long season, that ability usually allows a team to pick up five or six extra wins for ten or twelve extra points, often the difference between being towards the bottom of the conference or up in a fight for one of the top four positions.

Cleary, the ability to find ways to win is an area of the Maple Leafs’ game which requires a great deal of attention.

During what has now turned into a six game losing streak, the Leafs have lost games in all sorts of ways. They’ve blown early leads against the Atlanta Thrashers. Try too many men on the ice penalties in overtime against the Tampa Bay Lightning, that’s not going to help. How about just mailing one in against the Florida Panthers or sitting right back in the middle of a game against the Los Angeles Kings? Chase one of the best netminders in the game in Robert Luongo after one period against the Vancouver Canucks and still manage to lose that game.

Part of it has to be a confidence issue at this point because it seems like the moment one thing goes against the team, it snowballs into a full scale meltdown where the bleeding can never be stopped. Part of it has to be coaching as the Leafs continue to repeat the same mistakes time and again. Part of it has to be the fact that, quite honestly, the group of players simply isn’t good enough to win on a consistent basis.

At the end of the day though, once all those fractions are put together, it becomes clear just how bad of a situation the teams is in at this point and how much work needs to be done before the Leafs can even begin to climb back to respectability. But hey, all that was just rigamarole.