The Toronto Maple Leafs need to improve their defense, and soon

Things only seem to get worse in Leaf Land.

Following another blown multi-goal lead, there are still plenty of questions surrounding the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Leafs lost to the Edmonton Oilers, 4-2, on Tuesday, allowing a 2-0 lead to slip away, and Toronto finds itself on a four-game losing streak. In the process, the team has squandered leads in each game, most notable throwing away a 3-0 lead against the Colorado Avalanche last Saturday.

Sure, Toronto is still third in the Atlantic Division, but they are just one point ahead of the fourth-place Detroit Red Wings, and 11 back of the Boston Bruins for tops in the division.

The big question that has risen over the last couple of weeks is the team’s inability to keep the puck out of the net, and not necessarily because of a lack of goaltending.

The blueline has been a question mark for most of Brendan Shanahan’s tenure as President of the team. Though they have made attempts to improve on the backend, it has not been good enough for the team to make deep runs in the playoffs.

On Wednesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Luke Gazdic joined Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk to discuss the team’s glaring problems.

Luke Gazdic: I don’t know what more [coach] Sheldon [Keefe] could have done last night. I really though their d-core was their anchor last night, in a bad way. Lost d-zone coverage…they got a pretty good no. 1 in Morgan Rielly, but past that, four or five of those guys are bottom-end defensemen.

Frank Seravalli: I think [Rielly’s’] a top, number-two. They’ve got two number-four’s, and three number-seven’s. That’s really where they’re at.

Gazdic: You could really see it last night, they got exposed.

You can watch the full segment, and the entire episode here…