from Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star,

It’s probably a good thing most Maple Leafs vacated the GTA during their ongoing bye week and all-star break. If they’d stayed, they might not have enjoyed the tone of the public discourse around their season.

The “outside noise,” as the players have come to call it, has the Maple Leafs in a heap of trouble of their own making. And in some ways they are. In a matter of a couple of weeks, after they lost five of six games leading into their eight-day respite from the grind, they went from being relatively firmly ensconced in third place in the Atlantic Division to a much more precarious lot in life — four points back of the third-place Florida Panthers and three points out of the final wild-card slot.

That’s nothing that can’t be easily made up in the remaining 33 games, but it’s a rough stretch, for sure. The playoff odds at MoneyPuck.com have Toronto as a 63% shot to make the playoffs. Which is to say: The season is getting uncomfortably close to coming down to a coin flip.

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