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Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier hangs his head during third period NHL action against the Arizona Coyotes in Toronto on Friday January 29, 2015.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press

The sequence was a telling one as far as how things have gone for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Phil Kessel got the puck, and he fumbled it away in the neutral zone. Then he got it again and flubbed another pass. And another.

He glumly went to the bench.

This was the first period. It was scoreless against the bottom feeding Arizona Coyotes. There was no reason to be down. But the Leafs looked it.

Typically, Kessel has a surety with the puck, one that's missing when it's not on his stick. That's when he's comfortable; that's when he's dangerous.

But it hasn't been that way through one of the toughest droughts of his career.

Kessel finally broke through on Thursday. After 18 games without an even strength goal, he found the back of the net, a squeaker thanks to some shoddy goaltending from Arizona's Mike Smith, who's had a shoddy season, all told.

Again, the Leafs didn't win, falling 3-1 to extend their losing skid to eight games.

Or 19, depending on where you stop counting.

"Not good enough again," an exasperated Kessel said afterward.

Kessel has been given a rough ride in this city for just about everything these days, but what he's really been is simply the poster boy for a truly bizarre season.

Consider, for example, that the Leafs (and Kessel) could do nothing but hit the back of the net for two months to start the year.

Now, their opponents are having a go at that.

This is a team that was first in shooting percentage after 31 games and 19-9-3. They have since had 19 games in dead last in the exact same statistic and are 3-15-1.

That's not every Leaf – including Kessel – suddenly forgetting how to shoot the puck at once. It's partly a change in system and partly some strange voodoo at work, a hex set to put this team on the craziest course up and down the standings possible.

At the moment, they're still progressing down. Rapidly.

"I don't think I've been this cold in a long time," Kessel said at one point this week.

Not since the Leafs brutal skid, actually. They finished the year last season 3-13-0, and Kessel had three goals, four assists and that same glum look on his face.

Few want to hear it right now – especially as their draft pick has improved dramatically, close now to top five – but the Leafs are not this bad. They're not going to flail their way out of the season at this horrid pace, not with 32 games left to get things together and not with new coach Peter Horachek clearly succeeding in reaching them with his plea for more defensive responsibility.

They're not going to continue to have this many bounces go against them – although sometimes you wonder when Oliver Ekman-Larsson floats a long wrist shot in from his own blueline off the third period's opening faceoff, as he did this night.

A 114-foot hole-in-one, with a fade, left to right.

"I didn't see it," Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier lamented afterward, after taking a moment in the dressing room's back section to compose himself before meeting the media. "I lost it in the stands. It just dipped in front of me."

"You can't make excuses," Horachek said.

"We obviously didn't respond in the right way," winger James van Riemsdyk added.

"Bad bounces," Kessel called the goals. "What can you do? You know, that's just how it's going."

He has a point. This is bad. As bad as it's been for the franchise, streak-wise, in 25 years. But the Leafs will start to win, eventually – at least a whole lot more than they have the last six weeks.

Bernier will start to save more than the ugly .896 save percentage he has in January.

Kessel will start to score, too, likely enough to end the year with 30-35 goals.

He took a step toward that in this one, firing a shot from near the hash marks late in the first that befuddled Smith as it trickled through five-hole. That marked Kessel's 20th of the year, putting him on pace for 33 over 82 games, which is pretty much the exact course he's cruised on for seven consecutive seasons.

He's due for another hot streak, too, as ill-timed as that'll be for the crowd that wants this to turn into a full-scale tank job.

That's the bizarre position this franchise is in right now; their own fans are rooting against them. They have seen the "valiant charge up the standings in March" one too many times to want to again.

But it's coming. Probably. Kessel doesn't stay cold forever, if the last six years are any indication, and the pall that settles in during a nasty losing streak like this eventually lifts.

Even when the playoffs are already a fanciful, faraway dream.

Especially when, actually, when it comes to this team.

"We know our situation with how many games are left and what we need to do in the standings," van Riemsdyk said. "Each game that passes, it's going to be harder and harder to do that."

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