Garnet Exelby had prepared for the worst.

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Mikhail Grabovski throws a tennis ball over the head of teammate Jay Rosehill during, believe it or not, a friendly game of on-ice dodgeball at a very unorthodox practice of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the MasterCard Centre for Hockey.

Photograph by : National Post

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On Tuesday, the Toronto Maple Leafs suffered their sixth straight loss to start the season. On Wednesday, the players were given the day off. So when the team reconvened for practice yesterday, the veteran defenceman arrived to the rink imagining a two-hour session of bag skating, body checking and other forms of on-ice torture.

Instead, he experienced something that the Leafs have been missing in the last two weeks: fun.

Stealing a page out of a pee wee hockey handbook, head coach Ron Wilson put away the pucks and brought out the tennis balls for an impromptu game of dodge ball yesterday. The diversion from the usual practice drills will probably not help remedy the anemic penalty kill. But it may have served a greater purpose by putting a much-needed smile on everyone's face.

"It was a nice change, a bit of reverse psychology," Exelby said. "It was exactly what the group needed. Just to let loose a little bit and remember that we're here to have fun as well."

The point of yesterday's practice was to lighten the mood in what has become a dark time for Toronto's hockey team.

Last in the National Hockey League standings with a 0-5-1 record, the Leafs have not had much to feel good about this season. They are off to one of the worst starts in franchise history. And during their last three games at the Air Canada Centre, the home crowd has serenaded Toronto's players with jeers.

"We're under the water right now," Wilson said. "We just got to find a way to get to the surface and take a breath."

When the team struggled in the past, Wilson relied on bag skating, benching and blaming his charges for a lack of effort. But by replacing his riding crop with encouraging pats on the back, the hope is the Leafs will rebuild their shattered confidence.

"Scaring guys or something is not going to work," defenceman Ian White said. "Guys are holding their sticks tighter and we're not able to make even basic plays. That might be due to not being able to handle the pressure.

"We needed to have a little fun and relax. Obviously, when you're in this position, the stress builds by the minute."

No one might be feeling the stress more these days than Brian Burke.

At the start of the season, the Leafs GM predicted this team would qualify for the playoffs. And after trading a package of first-and second-round draft picks for Phil Kessel, the pressure to perform only grew.

But rather than vent his frustrations with the team's performance, Burke told the players in a meeting yesterday that he had faith in them.

"The biggest thing is, if everyone does their job a little bit better, we'll be better off," Komisarek said of Burke's message. "You can't change the start that we've had. No one wanted this. No one wanted to start this way. But the belief and the attitude has to be that we're going to get out of this. We got ourselves in this mess and we're going to work our way out of it."

The road back to respectability begins tomorrow night against the New York Rangers.

A win will not come easy. The Rangers have won six straight games, and defeated the Leafs 7-2 when the teams last met. And Toronto will be without goaltenders Vesa Toskala and Jonas Gustavsson, who are both nursing injuries.

Still, desperation can be a powerful motivational tool.

With the Leafs not playing again until the following Saturday, a loss could mean seven more days of hanging heads and hearing criticism. But the team is doing its best not to treat this as a do-or-die game -- even though it feels like it is.

"We've got to fix how we handle adversity, otherwise this will be the longest season of our lives," said Wilson. "I'm pretty sure we have a strong enough group in there."

mtraikos@nationalpost.com