Identity crisis: Toronto Maple Leafs should be meaner than junkyard dog

"After 18 games, Toronto is looking more and more like an NHL pussycat"

Hard working, truculent, tough to play against, tough to score on. Nothing fancy, just a blue-collar hockey club that scrapes and claws and scratches out victories.

That is the kind of team the Toronto Maple Leafs need to be. And it is the type of team the Leafs players say they want to be.

But it is not who the Leafs are, not yet, not even close as their season teeters toward the 20-game mark. The quarter-pole in an NHL campaign is a tell-tale point when a general manager and a head coach can look at their club and say, with some conviction, this is our identity -- this is who we are.

Ron Wilson can't say who his Leafs are, or maybe he just doesn't want to say, although he does know what he wants them to be: hard to play against and ferocious on the forecheck. But after 18 games, Toronto is looking more and more like an NHL pussycat, with a 3-10-5 record and a dressing room full of players just as baffled as their coach by the ongoing identity crisis and the lack of results.

"I think we are searching for our identity," forward Jason Blake said yesterday.

There are some contradictory clues as to what the Leafs' true character might be. For evidence, we submit Saturday's 5-2 loss to Calgary at the Air Canada Centre.

The Leafs piled out of the dressing room like a band of drunken, drowsy sailors, falling behind 2-0 before many of the paying customers had taken their seats. It was a familiar pattern. Toronto has allowed the first goal 16 times this season, and spotted the opposition a pair of markers on nine occasions.

But just when things looked bleak and a blowout loomed, the Leafs abruptly sobered up, realized the hole they were in, and played their hearts out in an effort to climb out of it while out-shooting the Flames 30-15 over the final two periods.

The result: a moral victory. And another defeat, Toronto's third in a row.

"You fall asleep for five minutes against a good team and they are going to make you pay," forward Matt Stajan said. "All of us have to be stronger mentally. I think we just maybe squeeze our sticks too tight [at the start of a game]. We have to take it on ourselves and try something different mentally."

Perhaps hypnotism is the answer, or failing that, a visit with the team psychologist. Stajan insisted the Leafs have not lost hope, or their confidence. He says there is a belief in the dressing room that they are a good team, and just need to show it on a consistent basis, for 60 minutes a night.

"I don't think there is any doubt in here that we can be better," Stajan says. "We definitely haven't played our best, and we could say the bounces haven't gone our way, but that's hockey. We just got to find a way here to put this thing all together. We just haven't come together as a team yet."

And so the search to find the Maple Leaf identity goes on, as does a crisis that sees Toronto on pace for a 50-point season. But the players are not panicking. Maybe that's because while they may not know who they are, they do know a few things about what they are not.

"We are not the Detroit Red Wings," Blake said. "We don't have that skill. You know how they play. It is a keep-away fest out there for them. For us to win, we have to be good in all areas --we don't have to be great -- but we have to outwork them, outhit them, chip pucks in, use our speed on the forecheck and get to the net.

"We are not going to have any easy nights."