TORONTO — The cushion is gone.
Vanished, evaporated.
The Toronto Maple Leafs might even find themselves holding down the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference by the time they take the ice for a game against Tampa Bay on Wednesday night.
Ten days of spinning their wheels — and, yes, enduring a few bad bounces — has brought the Leafs back to the pack after a better-than-expected start to the shortened season.
While this might be the place most thought they’d end up eventually (among the cluster of teams fighting it out for the low playoff seeds), Toronto looked to have bought itself a little more margin for error after compiling a 15-9-0 record during the first half.
They haven’t won since.
A 5-4 shootout loss to Winnipeg on Saturday extended the winless slide to five games and represented another missed opportunity, what with the team playing roughly 50 strong minutes compared with 15 awful ones.
The ugly stretch commenced when the puck was dropped for the second period and saw a 1-0 Toronto lead quickly turn in to a 4-1 deficit.
“Early in the second period they were just more prepared to work,” said Leafs forward Nazem Kadri. “A couple shifts here and there, momentum changed and all of a sudden we were down three in the blink of an eye.”
The goals came from everywhere.
One was batted out of the air by Antti Miettinen after a Dustin Byfuglien point shot deflected straight up off the glove of Ben Scrivens. Another took a crazy bounce off Dion Phaneuf’s stick and was met perfectly with a Blake Wheeler backhand.
However, all of them were the product of hard work by the Jets and a mini-meltdown by Toronto.
It was an all-too-familiar sight for Leafs coach Randy Carlyle. Just two nights ago, he watched his team turn a strong performance against Pittsburgh into a loss with an eight-minute lapse in the third period.
“It’s a mindset that’s got to change in our group,” said Carlyle. “You’re not going to have success and you’re not going to be able to even get points if you’re going to have speed bumps like those within the game.
“I think we just have to take responsibility for it and look ourselves in the mirror and say: ‘Hey, this can’t be happening to this hockey club.”‘
The players didn’t have much trouble identifying some positives to focus on.
Finding a way to claw back when everything appeared to be going wrong was a source of encouragement, as was the stingy defence that limited the Jets to just seven total shots in the third period and overtime.
A two-goal performance by Joffrey Lupul in his first game in nearly two months shouldn’t get overlooked either.
He’s expected to be a major offensive contributor for this team and didn’t disappoint after recovering from a broken right forearm. His first goal came about 10 seconds into his first shift when Kadri found him open in the high slot.
“I didn’t really have time to feel the nerves,” said Lupul. “I got out there, a guy turned the puck over, Naz made a nice pass and I scored before I felt like I was even into it.
“That was pretty much the dream first shift back.”
Lupul celebrated by motioning his hands to the crowd in an attempt to get them to pump up the volume. He did the same after scoring late in the second period to get Toronto back to 4-3 down.
“We’re scoring, we’re playing hard,” said Lupul. “I mean it’s alright (for them) to cheer — to come to the game and cheer.”
With a number of Jets fans in the building, there was actually an above-average atmosphere for the game. But the Leafs players seem to feel as though the fan base has yet to embrace them and at this point it might take a long overdue playoff berth to change that.
Despite the recent swoon, the odds are still in Toronto’s favour, with sportsclubstats.com pegging the odds at 76 per cent as of Sunday morning.
However, a pessimist might point out that the team is trending in the wrong direction. The Leafs now sit sixth in the conference and have played more games than virtually everyone that is chasing them.
Yet they did earn a valuable point by mounting a comeback against Winnipeg — something that shouldn’t be completely clouded by the fact they failed to come away from a 10-round shootout with the other one.
“We were close tonight,” said Leafs goalie James Reimer, who replaced Scrivens after 40 minutes. “A shootout is a weird thing, it’s a gimmick obviously. Honestly I treat it like a tie. We lost the two points, which sucks, but really it’s a team game and we tied the Jets tonight.
“That’s just the way it goes.”
The tiebreaker hasn’t been kind to the Maple Leafs since it was introduced coming out of the 2004-05 lockout. Toronto is just 29-42 all-time in shootouts and last won one of these things at Air Canada Centre back on Oct. 19, 2011 — during the first ever visit by the reborn Jets.
It could have been a different story on this night if not for attempts by Kadri, Matt Frattin and James van Riemsdyk that struck iron behind Jets goalie Ondrej Pavelec.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“We hit three posts in the shootout,” said Carlyle. “That’s just the way it’s going right now.”