Maybe he meant, "there's lots of seasonS left."

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn told a reporter the other day that the team wasn't happy with its performance.

"We didn't want to start this way," he said, "but there's lots of season left."

So say what you will about the Leafs, but they don't know the meaning of the word "quit," and they certainly don't know how to read a schedule.

Twenty of their season's 82 games have been played and the Leafs have won three of them. At the rate they're going now, they'll be lucky to finish with a dozen wins. (For you non-hockey-fans who may be asking yourself if that's good, ten of the other 29 teams in the league already have 12 or more wins this season, so, no, that's not very good at all.)

Here's how bad the Leafs are: if they were to set for themselves what other teams might consider the modest goal of winning half of their games this season (a goal, incidentally, that 14 of the other 29 teams in the NHL are currently meeting or exceeding), they would have to win 38 of their next 61 games. That's a .623 winning percentage for the rest of the season.

"Surely that's doable, right?" asks the theoretically representative die-hard Toronto fan. Don't bet on it: the last time they did put up numbers like that was in the 2003-2004 season, and the last time before that was in 1961. In fact, they've only ever managed it six times since 1927.

So, anyway, Luke: there's always next season, right?