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There's nothing in Toronto like a faith-destroying debacle involving the Toronto Maple Leafs, the kind of game that leaves even the optimists shaking their heads.

You can feel it in the city after Tuesday's 9-2 loss to Nashville, the hope seeping away from this season with still more than a month to go before Christmas.

The Leafs were coming off a 6-2 loss to Buffalo, a team that entered that game on a five-game losing streak. The Sabres hadn't scored four goals in regulation time this season and yet against Toronto they managed to double their best output in what felt like a low point for the Maple Leafs.

That is until Tuesday night against Nashville which turned into a perfect storm of everything that is wrong with this Maple Leaf team.

It began with another horrendous start, with the Preds getting two good scoring chances in the opening minute before the Leafs surrendered a goal less than two minutes after the opening faceoff, the 17th time this season the Leafs have surrendered a goal in the first five minutes of a game.

Nashville's second goal came from Derek Roy, a player who hadn't scored in 38 games.

By the time it was 3-0, and TSN's Ray Ferraro was calling the period "mind-boggling" from a Maple Leaf perspective ... although perhaps he might have saved that term for later in the game had he known what was to come.

In racking up nine goals against the Leafs, the Predators became the second team in a row to at least double their highest goal output of the season against the Leafs.

In fact, the four Nashville goals scored during the first five minutes and 14 seconds of the third period equalled the Preds' best output for a sixty-minute game before Tuesday night.

There was no shortage of things that went wrong for the Maple Leafs but it's hard to top the fact that Nashville played the entire night around the Toronto crease with rarely an attempt at a body check thrown their way.

Essentially there was no price being paid for scoring on the Leafs ... whatsoever.

How then can this team still be 9-8-2 and still well within range to make something of this season?

Well, because the Leafs are a team that defies the old adage that you are what your record says you are.

Because their record doesn't reflect those massive fluctuations in performance from night to night, which seem to defy explanation and suggest that the overall commitment from this team is sorely lacking.

In their eight regulation time wins this season, the Leafs have outscored opponents by a score of 38-16. In their eight regulation time losses, they've been outscored 37-14.

In those 16 contests, only four of them been one-goal games. So not only do the Leafs struggle to win one-goal games, they hardly play in them either.

With this team it's feast or famine.

And that is highly indicative of a team where the lack of talent is far less of a problem than the overall commitment to consistency and improvement. Or that unless a win is going to come easily, the Leafs most nights aren't willing to fight for it.

Phil Kessel tried to calm the waters after Tuesday night's loss by suggesting things can't get any worse.

We can hope, but a wiser person might have said the same thing a few times already this season.