TORONTO - Jason Blake was too tired to move. He was curled up on all fours at centre ice, either praying for the strength to move or thanking someone above for bringing practice to an end. His face looked like a stoplight, and he was not alone.
Hours after they were blown out in Buffalo, the Toronto Maple Leafs were put through an agonizing 75-minute workout at Air Canada Centre. Head coach Ron Wilson claimed his aim was conditioning, not punishment, even though what he put his players through looked and sounded an awful lot like punishment.
"I don't want to talk about it anymore," Wilson growled at reporters. "You guys will beat this, and you can't even beat an egg. So stop beating this one up. We had a hard practice today, and we'll leave it at that. Tomorrow's another day."
And tomorrow will beget another tomorrow and, eventually, a whole new week. For the Leafs, marching into February with all the accumulated wear and tear of a regular-season schedule without the carrot of a post-season appearance at the end, daily motivation could become a challenge.
They sat 11th in the Eastern Conference standings yesterday, having lost 14 of their last 19 games. With the National Hockey League's trade deadline now less than a month away, rumours have already begun to swirl, creating the prospect of players competing for a team they could soon be watching in the rearview mirror.
"It shouldn't be an issue, at least to the guys who have been in the league," Leafs forward Niklas Hagman said. "With the younger guys, the older guys should tell them that, 'If you want to play in the league, you've got to show up every night. You can't take days off, because that comes to bite you in the ass in the long run.' "
In the short run, it can lead to days like yesterday. Players were on the ice just after noon, beginning with a drill that had them weaving the puck through traffic. Wilson then had them skating laps with the puck on their sticks, followed by a series of physical drills with forwards chasing defencemen into the end boards for loose pucks.
Within 30 minutes, there was no chatter on the ice.
Defenceman Jonas Frogren, freshly recalled from the American Hockey League, had his left wrist taped on the bench after a collision with forward Jamal Mayers. By the end, after a quarter of an hour spent skating hard laps, just about everyone was on a knee.
The Leafs had been flat against the Sabres, leaving rookie goaltender Justin Pogge on his own against Buffalo's forwards. Toronto fell 5-0, its second blowout loss in five games, after suffering through a 6-1 rout in Minnesota on Jan. 27.
"Everybody knows the season is long, and it has some tough times," Hagman said. "But you've just got to fight through. You've got to have pride when you put the jersey on, and you've got to be accountable for the guys that you sit next to."
Some of those players might not be sitting in Toronto for much longer, according to TSN, which has already begun its countdown to the March 4 trade deadline. A story posted on the network's Web site has suggested defencemen Pavel Kubina and Tomas Kaberle could both be on the market, along with Blake and fellow forward Nik Antropov.
Veteran defenceman Mike Van Ryn downplayed the potential for distractions.
"It shouldn't be, we're all professionals," he said. "If guys get moved out, they get moved. We've all been traded. There's nothing you can do about it. It's easier said than done, but the more you worry about it, the more you're going to hurt yourself. The sun always comes up the next day, and you've got to remember that."
And in case anyone forgets, Wilson suggested he has taken an interest in "conditioning," saying it is an area of concern he plans to address. Some players could interpret the new "conditioning" regimen as a means of motivation.
"It depends who you are, but for me, I think it does, yeah," defenceman Jeff Finger said. "You don't want to go through it again. Simple."
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