Playing hockey in Toronto for a living sure isn’t easy, just ask the guys doing it.

As if to emphasize the pressure the Toronto Maple Leafs are under, team psychologist Dana Sinclair was padding about the inner sanctum of the dressing room Tuesday night doing triage after another potential playoff-spoiling, 5-3 defeat to the visiting Florida Panthers.

There was a long chat with goalie James Reimer. Defenceman Carl Gunnarsson, fighting himself all night, paused as well.

Who knows what she’s going to do with Luke Schenn, who steps on the ice to play hockey and sees hand grenades instead of pucks.

"I messed up pretty bad first shift," said a shaken Schenn of the awful giveaway that ended up behind Reimer a moment later. "I’ll take the blame 100 per cent. It was a normal D-to-D play and I have no excuse for it."

The game was 13 seconds old at this point and things got worse from there as Toronto was down by another goal after two minutes and 21 seconds.

They’re now sitting at 1-8-1 in their past 10 games including losing four straight at home. Their playoff chances are sinking like a stone.

Their timid start marked the fifth straight game they fell behind 2-0, and not to beat a dead horse, but the next three goals were, to varying degrees, the fault of Reimer. This is the same second-year goalie that Leafs general manager Brian Burke once more pledged his allegiance to in the moments after the NHL trade deadline passed on Monday.

Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf is hardly from the touchy-feely school, but even he allowed that the team he’s leading is playing with the mental poise of a bunch of 10-year-old girls before a big dance recital. This is not ideal.

Is his team a little fragile right now?

"It’s was tough month for guys in our room," said Phaneuf. "That’s not an excuse, that’s the reality of playing in a big market like Toronto. There’s a lot of media coverage, there’s a lot of rumours and a lot of guys have had a lot more stress than they needed."

The irony is, the psychology experiment known as the world’s richest and most popular hockey team was reborn the morning after collectively weathering the special hell known as the NHL trade deadline. The Toronto edition saw only Keith Aulie being sacrificed to the trade deadline Gods.

To a man they pledged their fealty to Burke, the guy who expressed his confidence in the group by not finding anyone good enough to trade for them. Your heart almost went out to Reimer, who is earnest and well-meaning even by the standards of Morweena, Manitoba.

At the pre-game skate he talked optimistically about the 20 games remaining in the season and the playoff push that was sure as the rising sun now that the dark cloud had been lifted and all those nasty trade rumours (although, technically, they aren’t rumours when it’s the general manager saying he’s in the market for goal-tending help, is it?) were a thing of the past.

By day’s end he was huddled with the team psychologist, perhaps hoping she could explain why every fat rebound is ending up on the stick of a wide-open opponent, as was the case in the Panther’s back-breaking third goal, or how he could fail to cover up a loose puck in the crease as was the case on the fourth and the fifth.

Reimer’s woeful night inspired the most sarcastic of Bronx cheers.

"The fans here, they care," he said. "It sometimes tough, as a player you never want to hear that. …. But if we’re not playing up to their standards, who are we to say they can’t boo?"

At least he knows the answer to that question.

The problem for the Leafs and for Burke and coach Ron Wilson – who admitted some frustration at hearing the ‘Fire Wilson’ chants that went up in the third period – is that this is a monster of their own making.

It’s Burke who has made playing in Toronto a special psychological hurdle, even if it defies logical sense, as if players in other Canadian cities don’t face scrutiny.

But it was the president and general manager who described playing in Toronto leading up to the trade deadline as "murder" and "a millstone," which precipitated his bizarre suggestion that some kind of special team rule backing the deadline up 10 days or so might have to be implemented to make sure it doesn’t happen again next year.

It was Burke offering the biggest excuse of all: Playing in Toronto is too hard.

Unfortunately with the fog lifted and a new day dawning, his hand-picked club, coached by his old college friend – the same one he provided a contract extension for despite three straight seasons out of the playoffs – came out flat.

That looked tentative. Admitted to being fragile.

It’s not an excuse, understand, it’s their reality.

That’s one version. The other is that if playing hockey in the NHL is 90 per cent mental, as Schenn was saying after the game, this version of the Leafs – assembled by Burke and coached by his friend -- simply don’t have what it takes.