Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier makes a save on Anaheim Ducks forward Kyle Palmieri during first period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Tuesday, December 16, 2014.The Canadian Press
Consider the coach unimpressed.
Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs are 10-1-1 in their last 12 games, and yes, they just beat the best team in hockey, the Anaheim Ducks, by a convincing 6-2 score on Tuesday night.
The home crowd was understandably going bananas, especially after Phil Kessel added two dagger goals late.
But Randy Carlyle has seen this movie before.
And he doesn't want a repeat viewing.
"Now I feel that we are slipping," the Leafs coach said in response to a question about his team's wildly successful last month since a 9-2 loss to Nashville. "The last couple games. We have to get back to that more energetic, more stop and go, more straight-line hockey.
"We do have some players that are continuing to do it. But I think as a whole we feel our game has slipped here."
He knows. In large part because this isn't new for the Leafs.
In fact, Toronto went 11-2-1 prior to the Olympic break last season, and there are certainly some similarities in the two streaks.
In that run, the Leafs scored a league-high 51 goals in 14 games (3.64 per game) with a league-high 12.5 shooting percentage and were outshot an average of 35.8 to 29.1.
In their current 12-game streak, the Leafs have scored a league-high 49 goals (4.08 per game) with a league-high 14.2 per cent shooting percentage and have been outshot an average of 34.1 to 28.8.
In terms of analytics, last year's hot streak came with a 44.3 per cent possession rating, better than only Buffalo over the same time frame.
This year, it's 42.7 per cent.
Which is better than only Buffalo.
If anything, this run is more unsustainable than that one.
So you can understand why Carlyle might be concerned, given his team went 6-14-2 post-Olympics last season to end the year in eighth last in the NHL.
The Leafs are a very tough team to get a handle on a lot of nights. Territorially, Anaheim was the better team early on on Tuesday, but they didn't get the lead and they were left playing catch-up against a Toronto team that is a league-best 14-0 when it scores the first goal.
Based on results alone, the Leafs seem to be wildly inconsistent: able to outscore the top teams in the league some nights, but then flat as a pancake on others.
They boast a lot of offensive talent – especially after upgrading their forward depth considerably in the summer – but the debate now with this team is whether those upgrades will be enough to avoid a fall-off like the one last season.
What's obvious is they can't keep winning like this.
Of late, they have been hugely fortunate to get as many goals as they have, and their two goalies have been largely unbeatable at the other end of the rink.
(Netminder Jonathan Bernier moved into a tie for seventh in save percentage with Detroit's Jimmy Howard among netminders with 20-plus starts at .922 after Tuesday's win.)
"I think we were very opportunistic tonight," Carlyle said of his team's goals against the Ducks. "I don't think you could say we're going to bottle that and take that to the bank tomorrow and say 'hey we felt good about ourselves.'
"From an execution standpoint and a defensive standpoint. We didn't seem to have any energy in our fore-check. We were receiving, and we stopped skating. But we won."
They did – and full marks for that.
The only question is how long they can continue to do so.