Goaltender Joseph Woll left Thursday's game with a lower-body injury, which means it could be Dennis Hildeby's time to shine.
Right when things were starting to get good for the Toronto Maple Leafs, they suffered a devastating blow with Woll's injury. Their former number-one goalie Anthony Stolarz is already out, for who knows how long, with an injury, so losing Woll seems like it could stop the momentum for this team. However, not so fast.
Although it feels like the "Hildebeast" has been around forever, he's still a young goaltender. This is only the 24-year-old's third professional season within the Leafs organization and he's only played 13 NHL games. Also, all of those games have been in tough situations on either back-to-back games, or with a team in front of him who may not trust him.
After Thursday's game, captain Auston Matthews had big compliments for Hildeby saying "You could just see he's got a quiet confidence to him anytime he steps in the net. He knows what he's doing in there." (via: Toronto Hockey Daily)
The team has now lost their two top goalies but it doesn't feel like the end is near for this team, thanks to those comments by Matthews. Over the past few games, Woll has looked great, but Hildeby's performance in relief against Carolina, as well as his game against the Pittsburgh Penguins where he stopped 35 shots should give the team confidence.
Hildeby looks ready to be the team's temporary starter
Goaltenders are always an interesting bunch and typically take much longer to reach their potential, so at 24-years-old, Hildeby could be primed for a breakout season, if given the opportunity. In those seven games, he has a very respectable .919 SV% and 2.89 GAA which is good enough to keep up the winning streak.
You can point towards Stolarz's .884 SV% and 3.51 GAA as the reason why the Leafs got off to such a terrible start, so Hildeby is a much better option than this year.
Obviously, you'd hope for Woll to return back healthy as the team has a tough stretch of opponents, but the games are spread out nicely. The Leafs play Montreal on Saturday followed by Tampa Bay on Monday, but get a few days off before facing San Jose on Thursday, which is nice. They don't play a back-to-back until December 20 or 21, so if Woll is out for a few weeks, the team can run Hildeby throughout that entire stretch which is nice.
The Hildebeast played 41 games with the Marlies in the 2023-24 season so he's used to a decent workload, With that being said, knock on wood, but he hasn't suffered too many injuries throughout his career, so durability shouldn't be an issue with him either, which is obviously something you can't say about Woll.
Obviously losing Woll stinks, but let's not think the season is over yet as Hildeby's play recently should give everyone hope that this team can keep the winning streak going and rise back into a playoff position.