Anthony Petrielli thinks the Maple Leafs have already made one of their most important offseason moves, and it happened behind the bench.
Speaking on The FAN Morning Show as part of his Maple Leafs Offseason Review series on MLHS, Petrielli said the changes around the team matter, but the biggest swing may come from Jim Hiller simply bringing order to a team that, in his view, was badly coached last season.
“It could be pretty significant.”
Petrielli pointed to last year’s issues with Craig Berube as the backdrop for why a steadier hand could matter so much. He said the Leafs were “a poorly coached team through and through, from deployment to usage to the structure they played with,” and added that by the end of the season, “They mailed it in.”
For Petrielli, the key isn’t that Hiller needs to be some kind of mastermind. It’s more basic than that. The Leafs have already added more checkers and players who can handle tougher minutes, and that should help lighten the load on Auston Matthews, who Petrielli said played the toughest minutes in the league last year among centers while skating with Max Domi as his most common winger.
That setup, he argued, never really made sense. Matthews could play with Domi, Petrielli said, but then those minutes should have been heavily offensive ones, not the kind of shifts where he was going head-to-head with players like Nick Suzuki or Brayden Point.
He also believes a more structured approach would help immediately.
“just has to be normal”
That was Petrielli’s line on Hiller, and he made clear why he thinks that standard alone could move the needle.
“I don’t think Hiller has to be great. I think Hiller just has to be normal, and that alone could be pretty significant.”
Petrielli also gave John Chayka credit for acting quickly in his first offseason as GM. He said there were fair questions when Chayka returned after being out of the league for half a decade - questions about whether he could reconnect with the league and rebuild his network - but he believes the front office overhaul deserves some recognition.
He said Chayka “didn’t sit on his hands,” and praised him for not spending a year evaluating people who had already been around for a long time. In Petrielli’s view, the season was “poor through and through,” so the decision to “rip the Band-Aid off” and install his own people made sense, even if the results of those hires are still to be determined.
On the blue line, Petrielli said Morgan Rielly staying on the roster is “an interesting one.” He wondered whether the Leafs could have gotten a return similar to what Edmonton got for Darnell Nurse, or whether they would have needed to attach an asset or retain salary to move him. Petrielli said he would not have eaten money or attached picks to deal Rielly, but if the goal was simply to clear the contract and use the money elsewhere, he would have leaned that way.
He said it felt like the fit had been off for most of last season, even if Rielly briefly looked energized after a conversation with management last offseason. After that, Petrielli said, things slid back into the same pattern.
If Rielly stays, Petrielli thinks it leaves Toronto with a strange-looking defense. He said the group is still very old, with the top six averaging just under 32 years old and only Emil Andrae under 30. He also said he expected Chayka to move out one of the veterans, even if it wasn’t Rielly, and noted that the defense market was not exactly rich with obvious Leafs-style fits.
In the end, Petrielli kept circling back to the same point: the Leafs are still built around Matthews. The team has added pieces that should help him, including a coach he knows and has had success with, plus players who can do the dirty work around him. But the star center still has to be the engine.
Petrielli said Matthews has not looked good for two years, and that even in the season when Toronto won the division, it felt like Mitch Marner’s 100-point contract year was driving that line more than Matthews was.
That, Petrielli said, is the real issue. The Leafs can shuffle the supporting cast, but if Matthews doesn’t lead the way, none of it will matter.
“It is a big year for him.”
He added that in the division last season, Nick Suzuki was clearly better, Tim Stutzle was clearly better, and Tage Thompson was probably better too, even with Thompson bouncing between center and wing. Petrielli even raised the question of whether Dylan Larkin was better last year.
For him, that can’t continue if Toronto expects to go anywhere. He pointed to Tampa Bay as the exception, where Brayden Point had a mediocre year but Nikita Kucherov piled up 140 points. Toronto, he said, doesn’t have that kind of margin for error.
The Leafs have made plenty of changes, Petrielli said, but the core question remains the same: can their top players actually carry the team?
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