As hard as it may be for Toronto Maple Leaf fans these days, I promise you, it’s even harder being a fan of the Edmonton Oilers.

Sure, it doesn’t cost $250 to see a game, and the Oilers have won five Stanley Cups since 1967. I’ll give you that.

But the Oilers have now lost 13 straight games and they’re dead last in the NHL – yep, one spot below your beloved Leafs – and unlike the Leafs, there’s no hope in sight.

See, the Leafs are already on the long road back to respectability. They have been for a year and a half now, since Brian Burke was introduced as the new general manager in November, 2008. He inherited a team heavy on salary and light on talent and has been slowly turning things around ever since. Acquiring Dion Phaneuf and Jean-Sebastien Giguere for a handful of bit players on Sunday afternoon was the latest step in that direction. Throw in sniper Phil Kessel, and the Leafs now have legitimate superstars in every position to build around.

The Oilers, on the other hand, are where the Leafs were two years ago. They’re paying Shawn Horcoff $7 million this year, and he has all of 20 points to show for it. They have $44 million invested in their blue line but are 28th in goals against. Thirty-seven-year-old goalie Nikolai Khabibulin is making $3.8 million but hasn’t played since November with a bad back.

And on the same day Leaf fans were feverishly dissecting the Phaneuf-Giguere deals, Oilers fans learned that their only legitimate trade bait, Sheldon Souray, had broken his hand in Saturday’s 6-1 rout by the Calgary Flames, making him virtually unmovable prior to the March 3 trade deadline. Great.

Is there help on the horizon? Er ... no. The Oilers’ minor-league affiliate, the Springfield Falcons, are dead last in the AHL. Sure, Jordan Eberle made a splash at the World Junior tournament, but he’s two years away from being a legitimate NHL player. Compared with Leafs prospect Nazem Kadri, it’s a wash.

And while the Leafs were snagging free-agent blue-chippers Jonas Gustavsson and Tyler Bozak last summer, the Oilers were desperately wasting their time courting mercurial sniper Dany Heatley, who not once but twice blocked a trade to the team.

Heatley’s rejection was just the latest slap in the face for the once-proud franchise. Since the glory years of the 1980s, a number of players like Shayne Corson, Chris Pronger and then Heatley have rejected the team and the city. No longer on financial life-support but unable to squeeze any more cachet from the Gretzky years, today’s players have made it clear that they simply would prefer to play in a bigger market with a higher profile, better weather and more potential for endorsement money.

So if Toronto is a hockey hotbed, Edmonton has become hockey’s hinterland.

And things are only going to get worse before they get better. Regardless of new owner Daryl Katz’s deep pockets and plans for a new arena, the team needs to unload salaries, move underachievers and restock their minor leagues, which likely means cutting right down to the wood and rebuilding from scratch. As we’ve seen with the Leafs, it’s not something that can happen overnight, and attracting players to the Edmonton market won’t be easy.

So go ahead, moan all you want, Leafs fans. Sure, the team doesn’t have any chance of making the playoffs this year. And Mike Komisarek was a bad free-agent pickup. And with Matt Stajan gone, there’s no one on the team to get the puck to Kessel.

But remember, things could be worse. You could be an Oilers fan.