Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving did his annual quarter-season mark press conference on Tuesday ahead of morning skate, and it couldn’t come at a better (or worse) time.

The Maple Leafs have lost five games in a row, with the majority of their issues stemming from poor defensive play and far less dependable goaltending. It’s still early enough in the season that the Leafs are only six points out of first in the division, but at any rate, a record of 8-9-2 to leave them tied with the Buffalo Sabres for last in the division is not an outcome that’s going to stand for long.

Treliving opened his press conference by acknowledging the team’s struggles.

“As we sit here today, we’re not where we want to be or where we envision to be,” Treliving stated. “Obviously, we’ve underperformed to this point. And I take full responsibility, I’m in charge of the hockey department, I put people in place on the ice. So, the responsibility lies with myself. And we start today and every day trying to get back up and going and improve where we are. There’s a lot of areas that need to improve on, and my job is working with Craig [Berube], the coaching staff and our players to get us back going and playing to a level that I believe we’re capable of playing.”

The Maple Leafs are currently fourth-last in the NHL in terms of goals allowed, with 72 goals against on the season and 67 goals-for which makes for a goal differential of minus-5. Treliving pointed to the team’s defensive struggles as an area the team needs to pick it up in.

“We’ve just got to play a more connected game,” Treliving continued. “Starting defensively, we’ve given up too much, and that’s on our whole group. We’re all turning up, right through our whole group. We’ve given up too much defensively, that wasn’t this team last year, right? When I talk about playing connected, it’s on both sides of the puck. Generating offence, we’ve scored goals, but to me, we haven’t done the things that you need to do to generate offence on a regular basis. Conversely, we haven’t done the things that you need to do collectively as a group to prevent the other team from scoring. I think the inconsistency of effort in some cases, and there’s a lot of nights that don’t question the effort, but there’s been some inconsistencies there.”

While a start like this would typically see the head coach land on the hot seat, it’s hard to look past the fact that Berube led the Maple Leafs to a franchise record in regular season wins, including an Atlantic Division title for the first time, and took them further in the playoffs than any other coach has in the past decade. Treliving reaffirmed his confidence in Berube to lead this team out of the ditch.

“Yeah, I’ve got all the faith in our coach right now, so I don’t look at that as the issue. My job right now is to support our coach, support his message, support our group.”

The number one question that comes up when the Leafs are struggling to this degree is something to the effect of ‘what is this team’s identity’? It’s a fair question, especially considering that skill isn’t winning them games lately, and Treliving said that there hasn’t been enough jam to their game this season.

“I think there’s been too much vanilla with our team, and that’s a big part of why you try to establish what your team is going to look like on a nightly basis,” Treliving explained. “When you’re going well, there’s going to be good nights and bad nights, but you have a pretty good idea of how it’s gonna look from night to night. A large part of the frustration is you don’t know how it’s going to look. It’s been in spurts, it’s been in periods, I think you can count on one hand how many complete games we’ve had.”

The Maple Leafs will look to get back into the win column on Tuesday night when they host the St. Louis Blues, and ideally, next time Treliving speaks to the media, it will be in a much better light.

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