Dion Phaneuf and the Maple Leafs take the rock out of “Jingle Bell Rock”

In principle, the idea was sound: Have a handful of uniformed Maple Leafs players come one-by-one into the studio to sing “Jingle Bell Rock” and splice the footage together for a holiday-themed video. The only problem was that almost to a man, the performers were either sharp, flat or arrhythmic.

Among the Leafs appearing in the video are captain Dion Phaneuf, Leo Komarov, Nazem Kadri, James Reimer, and Joffrey Lupul — who is probably the best of the otherwise robotic bunch.

As unlikely as it may sound, for the Leafs’ Christmas carol to be rescued, it needed a Lindsay Lohan-style intervention a la Mean Girls.