So which Leafs team do you think is the real McCoy? The team that pummeled the Stanley Cup finalist Detroit Red Wings 5-1 Saturday night or the team that was embarrassed Tuesday night on home ice, losing 5-2 against the draft lottery finalist Minnesota Wild?

Ya, that’s what I thought.

Last week’s two-game win streak may have had Torontonians planning parade routes and sporting retailers stocking up on Phil Kessel jerseys, but now that we’re all back on planet earth we can see this team for what it really is: lackluster.

The blue and white showed their true colours against Minnesota Tuesday night — an uninspired, hapless bunch that take foolish penalties and make countless mistakes as a team that sits dead last in the Western conference torches their net for five goals.

Some of the blame can be placed on Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson — those chants of “monster, monster” in the first period Tuesday night seem a little misplaced in hindsight, no? — who was between the pipes for four of the five Wild goals. But the real issue was with the group playing in front of him.

Careless Leaf penalties lead to the Wild’s first two goals on the night coming with the man advantage. The first was a holding the stick infraction taken by Rickard Wallin when jostling for position behind the net while the second was a foolish delay of game penalty taken by Alex Ponikarovsky when he flipped the puck over the glass in his own end. Although it seems the Western Mustangs men’s hockey team can get away with silly penalties on a nightly basis, it’s considerably harder to cover your footprints at the NHL level.

Television replays clearly showed Luke Schenn’s uninspired defence leading to the third Minnesota goal, as he allowed Mikko Koivu to plant himself in front of the Leaf net unchallenged and beat Gustavsson from point blank range. Those three goals, it turns out, were all the Wild would need.

All the talk this summer about general manager Brain Burke’s new philosophy which was intended to spark the team and make them tough to play against has been lost now as the leafs sit in 29th place in the 30 team league almost a quarter of the way through the season.

Don’t forget that Burke and Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson are also the G.M. and head coach of the United States’ ice hockey entry in the 2010 winter Olympics. As of yet, no one South of the border — and who can blame them because it really does take a lot to get Americans excited about hockey — has pointed to the Leafs’ malfunction as any kind of a harbinger of things to come.

For now we can chalk up the duo’s initial disappointment with the Leafs to poor player personnel, goaltending and growing pains. But if they fail in Vancouver with the best players from an entire country? Well, then it may be time to start questioning their hockey wits.