Toronto Maple Leafs: The losing skid continues

The Toronto Maple Leafs have now lost five straight games and are barely hanging on to a playoff spot after losing to Pittsburgh and Winnipeg. I was very disappointed at the result of the game against the Penguins.  They were a little over two minutes away in the third period of getting a single point, but Sidney Crosby and company scored two unanswered goals to win it 3-1. Tyler Bozak scores the lone goal in a 3-1 loss to Pittsburgh In the Winnipeg game, things started out okay for the Leafs when Joffery Lupul, whose been out for approximately two months with a broken arm, scored his first goal of the season to give Toronto a 1-0 lead in the first period.  ”He (Lupul) stands out,” said Leaf’s head coach, Randy Carlyle in the post game press conference as he describes the type of player Lupul is. In the second period, the Leafs came out flat and I mean flat.  I never seen such bad hockey in my life as I did in that period.  As a result, the Jets scored four unanswered goals and took a 4-1 lead.  At that point, I went to bed.  I couldn’t bare to watch the Leafs get hammered because in my mind, that ‘s where they were heading or so I thought. Imagine my surprise the next morning when I found out the Leafs came back and tied it 4-4.  They ended up losing it 5-4 in a shoot out.  ”There’s a positive thing you have to take out of it and that is we found a way to get a point out of  it,” said Carlyle. Maybe so, but the Leafs are still on a five losing streak with not too many games left.  Right now, they are in sixth place in the Eastern Conference standings. The next couple of weeks will be critical for the Leafs to rack up some wins and get as many points as they can in order to secure a playoff spot. They will face the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night and winning that game will not be an easy task.