Another barn burner here tonight with the Capitals in town, the second-best team in the league against its worst in a game very few expect the locals to have a hope in.

As I've mentioned before, the majority of my friends here are, in fact, Leafs fans, which at this point is about as wretched creature as you can imagine. Most of the sometimes lengthy hockey conversations I've had the past couple of weeks have included plenty of four letter words to describe the situation.

After the loss in Carolina to fall from 29th to 30th on Thursday, my one pal sent along this rant that deserves a wider audience:

I mean literally, when you give up six goals against the only team more hard-pressed to score than you in the league, you suck.

Bad luck, bad players, curse, bad whatever, I dunno. But they are truly, epically [intercoursed]. They have three wins in 20 games. They are on pace for 12 wins in an entire season.

They have Phil Kessel who looks like a dynamite player. Kadri who may turn into one. And that's literally it. There is $53-million dollar worth of player on this team doing absolutely nothing. They can't finish, and they make boneheaded mistakes at bad times, and every single one seems to end up in their own net. It's unprecedented.

Surely at some point you run out of excuses and say you're [intercoursed]. The first eight games, it was the goalie. No question. Then they were snakebitten and had bad luck for four, five games. Now they're just blowing it. There is no possible trade or UFA out of this. It's a minimum of 18 months before they can even start rebuilding. Think about that.

I know it sounds like hyperbole but at this point, I honestly can't think of a team in a more [intercoursed] position in the history of my 20 years of following professional sports.

THEY ARE ON PACE FOR 12 WINS. AND HAVE NO 1ST ROUNDER UNTIL 2012.

[Intercoursed]. I'm done with sports for a while.

Optimism? It's in short supply these days in Toronto.

They've bottomed out, and there are still 62 games to go.

Go Leafs Go?