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So that big fat 3-0 series lead has been stropped to a 3-2 razor’s edge for the Maple Leafs.

º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøhadn’t lost back-to-back games in five weeks. Anthony Stolarz hadn’t lost two games in a row in nearly seven weeks. Everything augured well. But augurs and Leafs — not a smooth fit.

That niggle of a doubt after Game 4 has now swelled into a low rumble keening, if not for the players then certainly for an oft gut-punched Leafs Nation. The blow to the belly came via a 4-0 loss to the Ottawa Senators in Game 5 at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday night. And for the 13th time since 2004 — 1-13 — º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøfailed to win a potential series-clinching game.

It’s a record of impotence in the short strokes that the Leafs will drag into the Canadian Tire Centre for Game 6 on Thursday.

“They capitalized on two chances,’’ Stolarz said afterward. “We seem a little snake-bitten.’’

Well, something has bitten them on the arse the last couple of games. It’s not as if the Leafs played awful, either. But weird whiff-y and muff-y and fumbling. Tight sticks, the look of a nervous team, even though it was the Senators on the brink.

“I thought we started well, had good chances, just the execution at times wasn’t there,’’ Auston Matthews said. “Obviously they get the first goal and we were just kind of chasing the game from there.

“They made good on their chances. And here we are.’’

Indeed, here they are. Again.

The Leafs are in a crusade for the cup, that’s no guff. They’ve been declaring it since the start of training camp. There was and still is a ring of truth, of verisimilitude, to it for this version of Leafs. Even without a conquest of Ottawa at home.

Collars and sphincters have tightened, however, whatever the sound bites.

They were desperate, the Senators. If the Leafs had started out maybe feigning that a bit, they were equally desperado as the ending hove into sight. By which time, they’d certainly got their hate on. As veteran Max Pacioretty had observed earlier: “You’ve got to play each night like you’re willing to die on the ice.’’

The Leafs didn’t look to be faking anything, certainly not in a high-tempo opening period, with a William Nylander breakaway that got bogged down on the drop pass to Max Domi, a mad scramble around the º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍønet with Morgan Rielly just managing to fish out a puck on the edge of the goal-line — it had hit the post — and John Tavares stoned on a breakaway backhander. That was all in the opening four minutes.

Held breath and jackhammering hearts all around the arena when the puck squirted loose into the º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøzone. The race was on between Stolarz and Claude Giroux. By a smidge, Stolarz beat Giroux to the puck, charging some 40 feet out of his net to do so.

Yet another breakaway in that frame — we’re seeing the return of the long-mothballed stretch pass — this time from Matthew Knies but Linus Ullmark was superb throughout in a showdown between goalies. There were broken sticks flying on a blunted º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøpower play, then the Senators came tantalizingly close but Simon Benoit blocked Drake Batherson’s stick at the corner of the crease and then knocked the puck away from danger.

So, that was 20 minutes of twitchy hockey. By the end of it, worrisomely, Matthews was on the bench icing the hand with which he had just blocked a shot

That might explain the two-on-on that went awry for Matthews early in the second. Instead, right off a faceoff shortly thereafter — Matthews lost the draw — the puck went to Thomas Chabot, whose wrister from inside the blue line made it through net-front traffic and behind Stolarz. Steven Lorentz was the puck carrier on a two-on-nothing incursion with two minutes left in the middle frame but it came to … nothing.

Stunning, really, how many º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøforays came to naught, on fanned shots and pucks that came nowhere close to threading the needle by Leafs sharpshooters.

The ignominy of it was a ripe chance that came the Leafs’ way — a power play at 6:58 of the third — and Ottawa ripped Toronto’s heart out with a 2-0 shorty by Dylan Cozens, with only Mitch Marner back.

A patch of boos, then. A couple of empty netters plumped the shutout.

“Fine,’’ insisted Marner, asked about the state of the team’s groove. “It’s not supposed to be easy. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They pushed back the last two games. Now we’ve got to go into their building and play our best game. We’ve been a great road team all year. We have confidence in this group.’’

Quiet as a tomb at the buzzer.