Toronto Maple Leafs' Nazem Kadri is checked off the puck by St. Louis Blues' Jaden Schwartz during the third period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015, in St. Louis.Billy Hurst/The Associated Press
When Peter Horachek took the podium, his voice was down to a croak, presumably the result of a nasty January cold.
Or screaming himself hoarse at the Toronto Maple Leafs. One or the other.
One of the first questions he was asked on Monday as his team finally returned home from their ugly 0-4 trip was how is the morale around his team, which has gone 3-12-0 on a disastrous slide down the standings the last month.
"I think that our mindset is in a pretty good place right now, knowing where we are," Horachek said. "We're not happy that we went on that road trip and didn't get points. We know where we are. We know what the situation is. But I think our focus is good. I think they know how we have to approach this game."
This game being Monday, at the Air Canada Centre, against the Carolina Hurricanes, the third worst team in the NHL this season.
Unlike the Leafs, they've been winning lately. They're 5-2-1 in January so far, in part thanks to getting healthy but more so because netminder Anton Khudobin has been on fire, with a .942 save percentage this month.
He'll be starting against Toronto, the team that goals forgot of late.
Which is bad news.
Or good, depending on how you're looking at this team these days.
The Leafs are going to have to be absurdly good the rest of the way to have a hope of making the playoffs. Like 22 or 23 wins in their last 36 games good, which has some in the fan base now hoping they'll continue to bottom out in order to have a higher chance at drafting first overall.
Facing Carolina in mid-January has basically become a must-win from the players' perspective, although you don't really get the sense they're approaching it that way.
But they're hopeful.
"We've got to stay positive and come out hard and play our game and hope we get a couple bounces," Phil Kessel said.
Much has been made of the Leafs scoring drought under Horachek, and that's fair enough. Eight goals in six games is an alarming fall off from where this team was earlier in the year, and the Leafs have plummeted to ninth in scoring rather quickly after sitting near the top early this season.
It defies belief to think this will continue, however, and regardless of the system they're in, these players should be able to produce offence over time.
The problem here is, for the Leafs, there is no time. Their season is on the line today – in terms of making the postseason – and only an improbable hot streak can save them.
That's what players are hoping for, as unlikely as it seems from the outside.
"Obviously I think we were the top scoring team in the league for a while there," Kessel said. "Now we must be the lowest scoring team in the league.
"But I think it'll change. I think we've got good players here. We've just got to get it going."
Notes
Part of what's hurting the Leafs offence is they're getting almost nothing from their depth players. With Peter Holland, Joffrey Lupul and Leo Komarov out and Horachek not wanting to use Mike Santorelli down the middle, they're stuck using Trevor Smith and Sam Carrick as two of their centres on the third and fourth lines.
The last eight games, the bottom six forwards in the lineup have one goal and one point, both coming from Smith. David Booth, Troy Bodie, David Clarkson, Carrick and Richard Panik all have absolutely nothing in that time frame, which goes back to the tail end of Randy Carlyle's tenure.
The pressure is on the stars – and they're not doing a ton either – but you're not going to win a lot of games with that happening.