It's funny how it's always the coach that cause the Toronto Maple Leafs struggles over the past decade, and not the players, but that statement may be more true than ever this year.
It's definitely fun watching Leafs games again this year, but fun doesn't always translate into wins. Our beloved blue-and-white are in the top-half of goals scored but are unfortunately near the bottom of the league in goals against. As a result, there have been a ton of high-scoring games which is a blast, but unfortunately not a lot of wins, lately.
When the Leafs signed Jim Hiller to be their new head coach, it was a bit of a head-scratcher, but then when you thought about it, it kinda made sense. He came from a defensive-first mentality but he also ran the Leafs power-play from 2015-2019 when they were one of the best in the league. He helped Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander become offensive stars, before becoming that coach we all remember who ran the 1-3-1 system in L.A.
When Hiller was with the Kings, he knew that the best teams play good defense, they check and then they maximize their offense from there. Unfortuantely for the Leafs, they aren't strong defensively and their biggest strength is offense so he needs to flip that mentality in Toronto.
Although he's a rookie, playing Gavin McKenna 13:56 of ice-time per night is not going to maximize the Leafs strengths right now. When Chris Tanev isn't in the line-up, the teams entire defense looks broken and it doesn't help that goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is looking his age right now too.
Hiller either needs to bring back the 1-3-1 system in Toronto to protect the Leafs terrible defensive structure, or he needs to open it up even more and lean into the offense, praying for a 6-5 win every night. Hiller should be loading up on his first-line, playing McKenna alongside Matthews and Nylander, hoping that those three can score three times per night and hope the rest of the group can hang on.
A big trade won't help the Leafs right now, but a firing might
When you're on a cold-streak, you'd think that your head coach would want to scream at the players, or at least talk to them about what to improve but according to Matthews, that's not happening (via: @Leafslatest on X)
“He usually doesn’t speak after games, so I’m sure we’ll continue to try to clean some stuff up and continue to go over video and make adjustments...At the end of the day, it’s just minimizing those big mistakes or turnovers, especially against other teams’ top lines.”
Toronto can look at making another big trade, but until Bobrovsky comes back to life, Kirill Marchenko and Chris Tanev get healthy, and Tavares pulls a Benjamin Button and reverse ages five years, the Leafs are on their way to missing the playoffs.
Even though Matthews is back to his old ways, a solo performance by him will not be enough for this team to suceed and although it's early, it unfortuantely doesn't look like they have the right coach, once again.
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