Jim Hiller didn’t try to dodge it.
After the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 5-4 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday, the head coach owned up to the decision that left rookie Gavin McKenna on the bench for roughly half the game. McKenna logged just nine shifts and finished with 6:36 of ice time, the lowest mark of his young NHL career. His final shift came at 10:20 of the second period.
“You know what? That was my decision,” Leafs head coach Jim Hiller said after the game.
We went for a stretch. I think we had those penalties.
I wanted to get him out there. He sat through the penalties, and then I didn't get him out there.
You know, through that stretch, and then in the last few minutes of the period, we're just trying to, you know, get out of the period. I guess you would say.
And then now, as I've sat him for so long, and he sits in the intermission, so I probably should have got him out there early in the third. I didn't.
So I'll talk to him about that."
Hiller said he plans to address the situation directly with the rookie, including why McKenna didn’t see the ice as much as expected and what kind of usage he had planned for him. Still, the coach doesn’t believe the reduced role will linger with the 18-year-old.
"I'll talk to him," Hiller said. "I've said this before.
I've talked to Gavin. Very, very mature.
Doesn't take anything too, too personally. That's what I've got from him.
He's usually ready to go. There's been other times I haven't played him as much and put him in there and double-shifted him and those kinds of things, and you know, he's responded.
So, yeah, I'll talk to him, but I, I don't have a big concern about that."
Auston Matthews, who scored Toronto’s first goal of the night, said a stretch like that isn’t where any player wants to be. Even so, the captain believes McKenna will take it the right way.
"Those things kind of happen sometimes," Matthews said post-game. "I mean, I think everybody's been in that situation before.
It's not necessarily a situation you want to be in. But we've all got his back.
A game like tonight is going to just make him hungry for the next one to go out there and, you know, compete and dominate. And I'm excited to watch that."
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