WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Maple Leafs were convinced they needed to get meaner and tougher and more ruthless.

This is why they paid big for David Clarkson, a bang-and-crash role player, for instance. And this is why they swung the New Year’s Day trade that brought Tim Gleason to Toronto. Gleason prides himself on being, as the cliche goes, “hard to play against.” The guy the Leafs sent to Carolina in the deal, John-Michael Liles, prides himself on being a skilled skater with a gift for the heads-up pass. Liles couldn’t find a niche in the Toronto lineup.

So if tuned-in Leaf fans raised eyebrows on Thursday night when Liles scored his first goal of the season for his new team, this while the Hurricanes beat the Leafs 6-1, they surely dropped their jaws when they heard head coach Randy Carlyle’s post-game critique of his club.

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The Toronto head coach who often chooses brute strength over speedy finesse, didn’t complain that the Leafs had been out-muscled or out-gooned. He pointed out that his team had been out-skated, a common occurrence this season that’s been easy to spot during a three-game losing streak in which the Leafs have been outscored by combined 13 goals.

“We’re doing things standing still,” Carlyle said. “We’re watching teams skate.”

It didn’t appear to dawn on Carlyle that on Thursday night that, as head coach, he was directly responsible for the fact that one of the Leafs who can skate well spent the night watching. The fleet Jake Gardiner was a healthy scratch in favour of, among others, the noble but relatively immobile Mark Fraser. Liles, meanwhile, was playing for the other team at the Toronto coach’s behest. And still, with Gleason looking uncomfortable (especially on Carolina’s first goal) and Fraser unable to keep up with the NHL pace, Carlyle had the nerve to complain that his team’s puck movement wasn’t up to snuff.

“Our puck movement in the defensive zone has been pretty much at a standstill in a lot of ways,” Carlyle said. “We pick the puck up and we’re slapping it around, but we’re slapping it to the opposition.”

In other words, they’re playing like a club populated by too many unskilled lugs, this in an era in which the best teams — think the Chicago Blackhawks — ice defensive corps consisting almost exclusively of heady, speedy puck movers.

Meanwhile, highly skilled former Leafs who’ve fallen out of favour with the Toronto coach play elsewhere. This week the Leafs demoted offensively talented centre Peter Holland, one of the prize pupils of Leafs skating consultant Barb Underhill, to the Marlies to make room for the brawny Carter Ashton.

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Carlyle’s other castoffs have been noted here often. Clarke MacArthur, who has spoken derisively of Carlyle’s approach since he fled for Ottawa as a free agent, is on pace for a 28-goal season. And Mikhail Grabovski, with whom the Leafs will tangle on Friday in Washington, scored his 12th goal of the season on Thursday night in Tampa, this some six months after he was expensively bought out in a move GM Dave Nonis has acknowledged was brought on by Grabovski’s lack of chemistry with Carlyle. Grabovski, who referred to the coach as an “idiot” and worse in a departing tirade, is on pace for 23 goals and 60 points this season.

Oh, and Grabovski can skate. Again and again on Thursday night, Carlyle bemoaned his team’s inability to do just that.

“Again, when we have chances to skate the puck we’re not skating it,” Carlyle said.

Carlyle trod familiar ground on Thursday night, claiming his team’s woes were due to a lack of “desire.” But at least one credible player, the hard-working Jay McClement, said he didn’t think his team’s woes were due to a lack of effort.

“At the start of the year we felt like we had a better team (than last year),” McClement said. “We still feel like we do. We’re not playing like it.”

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Under Carlyle, maybe this is who the Leafs are. It doesn’t help that the coach insists on icing a fourth line that borders on useless. Ashton, brought up to take Holland’s spot, managed less than four minutes of ice time playing with the slower-than-slow enforcer Colton Orr. Especially on the first night of a back-to-back it appeared to make little sense to deploy such a unit. Orr has all of two fightings majors this season and no discernable positive impact on matches. The downside is increased pressure on Toronto’s other three lines to carry the load.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why, 45 games into the season, the Leafs appear to be hitting a wall. The last time the Leafs were outscored by a 13-goal margin in a three-game span was in December of 1991, according to the Elias Sports Bureau; not to put pressure on Nonis, but the silver lining to that embarrassing chapter in club history came days later, when then-GM Cliff Fletcher swung the trade that brought Doug Gilmour to town.

Where’s the happy ending here? For the first time this season Toronto awoke on the outside of the postseason picture, this after both Carolina and the Rangers leap-frogged them for dibs on the second of two wildcard slots. Toronto’s chances of making the playoffs, according to the SportsClubStats.com, now sit at 21 per cent.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that things aren’t going anywhere near what our expectations are, that’s for sure,” Carlyle said Thursday.

Maybe not. But perhaps Thursday will alert the man behind the bench to go heavier on the speed and skill and lighter on the Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em slow dance.

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