PHILADELPHIA – Joffrey Lupul scored the fifth Maple Leaf goal that night in front of more than 19,000 at the ACC. Jamal Crawford Jersey . It was the fifth win in six games for the Leafs, who sat (seemingly secure) as the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference with 29 games left to go. Nine increasingly painstaking losses followed in the next 10 games. Ron Wilson was fired, Randy Carlyle was hired and the 18-wheeler ran off the cliff as then-president and GM Brian Burke described it mournfully. Changes to the core of the roster were marginal in the summer that followed; Luke Schenn was the most notable name punted, dealt here to the state of Pennsylvania for the Flyers former second-overall pick, James van Riemsdyk. That was the first collapse. Nearly three years later, amid three more meltdowns of varying order, change isn’t likely to be so minimal for the heart of the Leafs roster. And they know it. Lupul remembers his excitement when the Leafs returned from the three-day Christmas break this past December. His team was just a few points back of Montreal and Tampa for a share of the division lead and the East, in his view at least, was “wide open”. A lot was on the line for the core in the second half. This would be their chance to prove to Shanahan that major changes weren’t needed, that the core deserved another shot. Lupul acknowledged as much on the eve of the New Year. “If you’re not having success and you’re not showing that growth there’s going to be changes,” said Lupul before a December 31 tilt in Boston. “We’ve got to be better and we’ve got to show ourselves and coaches and management that this team is growing…” Lupul got hurt that night against the Bruins – Milan Lucic fell on his knee – returning a month later to find the group felled in yet another disturbing unraveling, losing for the 17th time in 20 games on Saturday. He and Toronto’s core – the likes of Phil Kessel, Dion Phaneuf and Tyler Bozak among others – are unlikely to get another chance. Shanahan warned as much in the days after Carlyle was fired, wanting to “make it very clear to them that we’re watching and that we’re on it.” “How they’re going to be defined is really up to them at this point,” Shanahan said at the official midway point of the season. “It’s going to be a big challenge and we’re going to learn a lot of things about our core in the coming weeks.” Shanahan made a rare address to the team that morning. They responded with a quality win that night over Columbus, only to lose each and every one of the nine games that followed in some fashion or another. The results have been evident enough. This core has failed and failed repeatedly. And they understand that change is coming, that the referendum on their tenure is all but over. “For sure,” Lupul acknowledged ahead of a 1-0 loss to the Flyers, their ninth straight. “Your highest-paid guys are always going to be the guys that get the most praise when you’re winning and the most criticism when you’re losing. We haven’t got the job done. It’s frustrating for me because I haven’t been playing during this – for myself that’s been the case too often.” Carrying an annual cap hit of $5.25 million for the three seasons that follow, Lupul is one among those main pieces who could find himself elsewhere in the offseason, if not sooner. He remains a productive player when healthy – 17 points in 28 games – but is unlikely to be a fit for the Leafs murky future given his age (31) and checkered history in Toronto. Bigger and more difficult questions for Shanahan and his front office team to debate are those of the Leafs two highest-paid players: Kessel and Phaneuf. It’s difficult to envision a scenario where both return next season given all that’s taken place in their respective tenures, not to mention the as yet unknown direction of the team moving forward. “I’m not management,” Kessel said when questioned on the subject. “I’m a player. I just play the game.” How deep the cuts run will be up to Shanahan. Will he opt for a complete teardown, perhaps parting with both Phaneuf and Kessel, or tinker around the edges with those like Lupul and Bozak, if not one or Phaneuf or Kessel? So many questions remain, not the least of which pertains to restricted free agents, Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Bernier, or the future of impending unrestricted free agents such as Cody Franson, Mike Santorelli and Daniel Winnik – all of whom could be dealt ahead of the March 2 deadline. The referendum on the core, though, is over. What’s to be done about it is all that remains. “We’ve got to take the brunt of the criticism,” Lupul said. “Obviously, the coach took some already and lost his job and then it falls on your highest-paid guys. We’ve got to be better and we all realize that there’s a lot more that we could’ve done throughout this year, especially through this losing streak, but it just kind of went the way it did. And all you can do now is keep positive in trying to get better as a group, and individually, and get out of this.” Five Points 1. Forgotten How to Score? The Leafs averaged 3.3 goals from October until the end of December and scored one or less a mere six times. In January alone, they managed one or less an astounding 10 times in 13 games, scoring 1.2 goals nightly in the process. “It’s weird, at the start of the year we were scoring four goals a game and now we’re fighting to get two,” Bozak said. “We’re a little unlucky right now too,” added Kessel, who has just three goals in the past 20 games. “I don’t think we’re playing as bad as our record. We go from one of the highest scoring teams to one of the lowest scoring teams. That’s a pretty bad run.” Toronto has fallen to 14th in league scoring, struck by an unthinkable spell of bad luck among other things. They peppered Steve Mason with 30 shots on Saturday, but couldnt get to fall. “We were questioning whether we’ve forgotten how to score,” Peter Holland said afterward, “but I don’t think that’s the case. I think if we’re creating the chances they’re going to come eventually. We keep saying it and it’s been eight or nine games now, but we just need to stick with it and I think we’ll get paid off in the end.” 2. Cold Peter Horachek said he’d never seen a stretch quite like this in his career. “But it doesn’t mean that’s it’s not a good experience that we’re going to learn something from,” he said. “As a group we’re going to learn what kind of resiliency we have, what kind of mental toughness and resolve we have, and we’re going to get through this. We’re going to work our way through this by playing playoff-type hockey, by putting more pucks to the net and getting those kind of goals rather the goals you score in October.” 3. Among the Cold... Bozak is one among the many cold Leafs. Fueled by the power-play (on which he scored six times) and a fiery 20 per-cent shooting mark, the 28-year-old wrung up 11 goals and 22 points in the first 23 games this season. A dip was predictable and it’s come with a thud. Bozak has scored only three goals in the past 28 games - only one on the power-play – while shooting a cool six per cent. He finished January with only three points in 13 games. “It’s been kind of a crazy stretch,” he said before Saturday’s game. “At the start of the year, the pucks were going in and we were getting a few more bounces in good areas. Things have changed.” Bozak is tied for fifth on the Leafs with 19 even-strength points, equal to David Clarkson with 1.29 points per 60 minutes at even-strength (entering Saturday’s play.) Last season, he posted 2.32 points per 60 under such circumstance – amongst the league leaders – aided by one of the highest on-ice shooting percentages in the league. 4. Bernier Out Jonathan Bernier didn’t get the chance to bounce back from his meltdown Thursday against the Coyotes. The Leafs instead went with James Reimer against the Flyers, an odd choice to be sure. “It’s not my decision,” Bernier said, informed of the decision on Friday night, “but obviously as a goalie you want to be in every night. But they felt that they wanted to go with [Reimer].” It was an awkward choice given how Bernier’s night ended against the Coyotes; he stopped the first 32 shots he faced before Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s shot from the opposing blue-line found its way in; another one from just above the goal-line slid through just a few minutes later. It stood to reason that the 26-year-old would get an opportunity to redeem himself as soon as possible, but evidently Toronto’s coaching staff thought differently. “Other than those two goals he played pretty solid,” Peter Horachek said of Bernier’s 42-save performance versus Arizona, “but it’s the first time he’s played back to back [this season] and this would’ve been three in four nights so I think it was a good time for Reims to go in.” Bernier, a restricted free agent at season’s end, is slogging through his roughest patch as a Leaf. In 10 starts before the All-Star break, he compiled an unseemly .891 save percentage, yielding a late game-tying goal to the Devils in his first game back. Reimer, meanwhile, stopped 17 of 18 against the Flyers, Michael Del Zotto beating him with a shot over the glove. “I felt that I could’ve had that first one,” he said afterward. “My job’s not to score goals. My job isn’t to put the puck in the net, it’s our team’s job, my job’s to keep it out. We lost 1-0 and I see that as I didn’t do my job well enough.” 5. Moral Support Stepping onto the Wells Fargo Center ice just before 11am Saturday morning was an unexpected figure. Dion Phaneuf didn’t return from the All-Star break, sidelined with a right hand injury. But there was Phaneuf back on the ice, back with his teammates in Philadelphia for moral support apparently. “When you go through tough times,” said Horachek, “when you’re not winning games when you think you should’ve or you’re going through a tough stretch, you need your leadership. You need those people in the room to be able to step up.” Phaneuf, who wore a black support of some sort on that injured right hand, was expected to sit at least another week or so, according to Horachek. Stats-Pack 16 – Goals scored by the Leafs in January. 10 – Number of times in January that the Leafs scored one goal or less. 6 – Number of times from October to December that the Leafs scored one goal or less. 26-7 – Margin by which the Leafs have been outscored during nine-game losing streak. 3 – Goals in the past 28 games for Tyler Bozak, who had 11 in the first 23 games. Special Teams Capsule PP: 0-1 Season: 18.6% (15th) PK: 2-2 Season: 83.4% (8th) Quote of the Night “I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but we are doing things better. But we have to find ways to get pucks in the net.” -Peter Horachek after the Leafs ninth straight loss. Quote of the Night II “We don’t like it, but I don’t think this is cancer. This isn’t something that’s real life-threatening. This is something that we have to learn from and we have to get better.” -Horachek trying to find some perspective in light of the team’s failings. Up Next The Leafs play in Nashville on Tuesday night. 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