Monday Morning Musings With Me, The Big E; Leafs New Year Cause For Concern

The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to a pretty good start in 2011 with a 5-2-1 record over all this year. Pretty impressive if you ask any fan of the team.

In the new year the teams numbers have also been impressive. Scoring is way up, in fact over the same eight game stretch, the Leafs scoring has been well above the league average of 2.78 goals per game at an average of 3.75 goals per game.

In fact, in the last ten games over all, the Leafs have scored an average of 3.5 goals per game and only allowed an average of 2.6. Good numbers.

The "Misfit" line of Mikhail Grabovski, Clarke MacArthur and Nikolai Kulemin have combined for a total of 21 points in the last five alone including 10 of the 18 goals the Leafs have scored over the same span.

The Maple Leafs also got some outstanding play between the pipes from rookie James Reimer who went  3-2 with the Leafs and posted a fantastic .933 save percentage to go along with an excellent 2.26 goals against.

With all of this good news surrounding the team, you may be asking yourself what could possibly be a cause for concern?

The answer is simple, there are still holes in this line up and there is very little Brian Burke can do to fix them in the short term. More specifically, before the trade dead line February 28th.

The Leafs have proven during stretches this season that they can indeed 'role with the big boys'. The trouble obviously is that they can't do it with and consistency.

That statement isn't necessarily a shot at any one player, though we could spend a lot of time picking apart the play of guys like Mike Komisarek, Francois Bauchemin and Dion Phanuef. Not to mention the inconsistent play of both JS Giguere and Jonas Gustavsson.

We could lament the in consistency of Phil Kessel all day long but the fact is, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the youngest team in the league and on a lot of nights it shows.

Surprisingly, the Leafs went 3-0-1 in a rare set of two back to back sets of games. They played with energy in all four games and when the chips were down so to speak they found a way to win.

They followed that up with two veritable stinkers against the Phoenix Coyotes and the Calgary Flames. Two games in a row that they appeared flat for the most part.

The Leafs have five games left before the end of the month, all five against teams that are ahead of them in the overall standings.

Four of which are against Eastern Conference rivals.

The end of the month will almost certainly show whether the team will be buyers or sellers at the deadline as the could move up to as high as ninth in the East if everything goes their way.

To do that, JS Giguere and the 'Monster' have got to play better than what they have shown so far. Reimer gave the team an unexpected chance to stay in the hunt, this team has to respond positively to that chance in the next five games or they're done.