Toronto Maple Leafs' David Clarkson celebrates after scoring a goal during first period NHL hockey action against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Toronto on Thursday, November 20, 2014.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Up and down. Up and down again.
And sometimes down, down, down… but not yet.
Hey, it's only November.
Welcome aboard the good roller coaster that is the Toronto Maple Leafs, the NHL team that you'll never quite get a handle on if you try to take stock of them night to night and week to week.
The Leafs won on Thursday, and while it was only game 20, this one was bigger than most this time of year. The barbarians were braying at the gate after three consecutive losses – including two nasty blowouts – and Wednesday's practice turned into a media circus.
Another loss, even if it was to a team sitting in second place when the puck dropped – the Tampa Bay Lightning – and the pile-on would have escalated further.
Instead, the Leafs did a very Leafs-like thing, putting together an altogether solid effort in a 5-2 win over one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference.
They even scored first, thanks to some hard work from Dan Winnik to beat an icing and a shot from David Clarkson that beat behemoth goalie Ben Bishop only a minute and a half in.
A Jake Gardiner-ism led to a shorthanded goal against late in the period, but it didn't matter: Toronto didn't falter.
Former Lightning youngster Richard Panik scored a pretty goal early in the second against his former mates.
James van Riemsdyk added two more late in the frame.
Just like that, it was 4-1, and it was more than enough.
"Tonight it was a team effort," defenceman Stephane Robidas said. "Everybody chipped in. And we got a good result."
So what does it mean?
It's no surprise that this team is capable of playing capable hockey, of beating good teams. Heck, they've done it already this season. The main criticism of the Leafs isn't that they're as atrocious as they looked in losing 6-2 to Buffalo and 9-2 to Nashville in the past six days; it's that they're a distressing hodgepodge of inconsistency and skittishness and haphazard management somehow piled into one hockey team.
The elements that allow Toronto to be better than bad were all there Thursday. Jonathan Bernier played well in goal, as he tends to. The first line showed they can beat you on the rush (JVR goal No. 1) or on the power play (JVR goal No. 2).
And, unlike a year ago, the third and fourth lines chipped in with key goals.
"We played like we were supposed to," Robidas explained. "It's no fun for anyone whenever you get beat like that [9-2 loss to Nashville]. We're pros. We're proud. We just want to play at a high level and that's what we did tonight. We've just got to build off that."
"It was a good response," van Riemsdyk said. "When things aren't going well in this city, you've got a lot of over-analyzing going on. So I think it was nice for us to put that little [losing] streak or whatever you want to call it behind us."
The Leafs finished last season with 84 points with a similar roster and wound up with the eighth overall pick and William Nylander as a result – which isn't a terrible outcome given how he's tearing up the Swedish league right now (14 points in 12 games as an 18 year old).
This year, they're only very slightly better, with that improved forward depth a big reason why. A 90-point season – which is exactly what they're now on pace for after beating Tampa – makes sense.
The problem with 90 points is this is a league where the average is now 92 and where you realistically only have a shot at a championship if you've got a whole lot of ducks in a row– the main one being the ability to play well defensively and drive the play to the other end of the rink.
That's how the Los Angeles Kings won their two recent Cups. Chicago, too. And you can well expect this year's winner to come from a similar mould.
Yes, the Leafs have the ability to look good on any given night. Almost every team in this closely contested league does. But contending teams do so far more convincingly and consistently, leaning on elite talent, depth and tactical superiority to play well – often even in losses.
A team that shows up 30 per cent of the time and is bombed out of the rink another 30 per cent of the time, muddling along winning as many as it loses on the way to 90 points, isn't necessarily progressing in any particular direction.
Sometimes it's simply going up and down, up and down – and crossing its fingers that that's somehow enough.
And it's not.
But more Nylanders would certainly help.