The Maple Leafs left Thursday with more than a 5-4 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres. They also walked away with a few uncomfortable questions hanging in the air: why rookie Gavin McKenna spent so much of the night on the bench, whether Jim Hiller’s style is nudging Toronto into a safer but duller version of itself, and if the answer on defence might already be sitting in the organization.
That third-period collapse - a two-goal lead gone in a hurry - put Hiller’s approach back under the microscope. One of the knocks on him is that he can lean too hard into protecting a lead instead of keeping the pressure on.
It’s a criticism that has followed him from the Los Angeles Kings, and Thursday’s finish gave it fresh life. Hiller said he should have gotten McKenna back into the game earlier, but the bigger issue is whether his bench decisions encourage a team to back off when it should be pressing forward.
There’s a real line between playing smart and playing scared. Responsible hockey matters.
So does knowing when to keep forcing the issue. Good teams can tighten up without disappearing into their own end, and the Maple Leafs have enough speed and skill to make opponents work.
If the instinct is always to guard the lead instead of hunting for the next goal, Toronto may be leaving something on the table - and making life harder on the fans who want to see a team that keeps coming.
That doesn’t mean one loss tells the whole story. It doesn’t.
And Hiller should not be judged on a single call involving a rookie. But if the Maple Leafs keep retreating into a shell every time they get ahead, then the concern becomes bigger than one game.
They need to finish, not fold into passive hockey and invite teams back in.
The blue line is another area demanding attention, and the club may not have to look outside the system to address it. There have been reports that Toronto has discussed bringing up Ben Danford from the American Hockey League Toronto Marlies. The appeal is obvious: Danford is a well-regarded prospect, and his AHL playoff performance suggests he could handle an NHL look, perhaps in a role of around 15 minutes a night.
That possibility gets even more interesting if Toronto is weighing whether to spend trade assets on a defender who might not be much of an upgrade. The Maple Leafs already took a look at Marshall Rifai at the NHL level, and that did not apparently go the way they wanted. Danford would give the team another internal option while it sorts out what it has and what it still needs.
There is also a complication. Danford is dealing with a lower-body injury and is considered day-to-day, so no call-up is locked in.
And there’s no sense in forcing the issue just because the NHL club needs help. If the Leafs do turn to him, they’d need to ease him in and keep his responsibilities limited.
One young defenceman is not going to erase all of Toronto’s problems by himself.
Still, if Danford is healthy and the staff believes he’s ready, the case for giving him a shot is a strong one. It may be a better use of resources than chasing a marginal fix on the trade market. For now, it remains something to monitor rather than a move that has been made.
Toronto has plenty to sort through after Thursday. The answer is not likely to come from one coaching choice or one prospect promotion alone.
Hiller has to prove his team can protect a lead without giving up the initiative, and the players have to handle game situations better when they’re ahead. The night in Buffalo was a reminder that a lead means little if a team chooses to sit on it.
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Morgan Rielly Is Forcing A Leafs Decision They Wanted To Avoid
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Toronto does not sound ready to make a dramatic move, but the discussion around Rielly is clearly shifting from concern to decision-making. The Leafs would like a version of him that looks closer to the player they expected, yet the path to getting there may involve uncomfortable lineup adjustments or, eventually, a bigger reset. For a team that has leaned on him for so long, even the possibility of a reduced role says plenty about where things stand. [Read more 🡒]