The Toronto Maple Leafs have been painful to watch all season, and after the team was eliminated from playoff contention, their games took on a new life of awful. Wednesday night’s game against the Washington Capitals was the perfect example of that.

Acknowledging that the only stakes in this game for the Maple Leafs involved their positioning for the draft lottery in a few weeks, it was a total culmination of things going wrong. Three minutes into the game, goaltender Anthony Stolarz collapsed to the ice after stretching out to make a routine save. He needed help getting off the ice and wouldn’t return to the game following the injury, which should effectively end his season with only four games remaining.

By the end of the second period, the Capitals were up 3-0 and down both Dakota Joshua and Brandon Carlo to injuries. Joshua collided awkwardly with Capitals defenceman Rasmus Sandin and fell backwards into the boards, and while it’s unknown what caused Carlo’s injury, neither player returned to the game for the third period.

The end result was a 4-0 loss to the Capitals following an empty-net goal by Cole Hutson (Lane’s brother, yes). Unlike other losses, where there were at least individual positives to take away such as a strong performance from a rookie, there’s simply nothing glass-half-full to say about the way they game went besides ‘thankfully there are only four left’.

Surely the Leafs won’t be in any sort of rush to get Joshua and Carlo ready for game action for the remainder of the season, so if anything, we can look forward to the possibility of prospects William Villeneuve and Luke Haymes getting a look in the NHL. Both players were recalled in recent days before getting sent back today for the Toronto Marlies’ rare morning game, but it’s entirely possible we’ll see one or both players in the lineup for Thursday’s game against the New York Islanders.

Four games left.