The Toronto Maple Leafs turned in one of their most uninspiring efforts of the season on Saturday night in a 3-0 shutout loss to the Vancouver Canucks. What made it so uninspiring wasn’t just the effort itself but the circumstances heading into the game.

The Canucks, playing on the second half of a back-to-back after facing the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday night, had their plane stalled in Raleigh due to weather issues and didn’t take off until the morning of the game. They arrived in Toronto the afternoon of the game but didn’t get a morning skate. Yet, if you had watched the game, you would have guessed the Leafs were the ones who were stalled and getting back in late. They had no energy, no urgency, and seemed to be completely disconnected from one another.

Head coach Craig Berube used the word “disconnected” to describe his team’s effort in their second-straight loss following a five-game winning streak.

“We obviously didn’t generate enough. And I think we have to generate more, power play included,” Berube said following the loss. “You have three power plays, right? The power play, which could have given us momentum in the game, you know, I think that we gotta move the puck. We didn’t move the puck well enough tonight. I don’t think we were connected well enough, breakouts out of the neutral zone…just our puck play in general wasn’t good.”

The Maple Leafs were 0-for-3 on the power play, which isn’t a huge sample size to judge from, but the way they tried to execute plays was a microcosm of the issues they’ve had on a grander scale for the past half-decade. It was the same five guys on the same top unit trying to enter the zone with the same drop pass and, eventually, the same chase back into their zone to get the puck after a quick clear. It’s been tried time and time again by this team, and when the opponent figures out how to shut them down, they can never figure out how to counter-attack.

When asked to expand on why he felt they were ‘disconnected’,

Well, there’s systems involved in the offensive zone that we have and I felt like we weren’t very connected,” Berube said. “At times, we moved it around well, but I don’t think we had enough traffic at the net either. So we got a little disconnected that way, but we’ve got an opportunity at practice to work on some things and get ready for the next game.”

The discouraging part about the use of ‘disconnected’ is that the Maple Leafs have been using this same power play unit for nearly five years now, which begs the question – why are things disconnected? It’s not like there’s a weak link on the power play or somebody who doesn’t have chemistry with the rest of the unit that’s causing the disconnect. These five players have played together on the same power play unit for a half-decade now. Of all the potential issues, being disconnected shouldn’t be one of them.

The Maple Leafs are back in action on Tuesday night when they host the Dallas Stars and look to get back into the win column.