Hiller Puts Every Maple Leaf on the Hook After Another Avalanche Loss
Four straight losses have Toronto searching for answers. Hiller wants more accountability, starting with a tough test against Minnesota Thursday.
Toronto dropped a 6-3 decision to Colorado on Tuesday, and the skid is now four straight losses and six defeats in the last seven games. That's a rough stretch for any club, and it's especially painful for one that expected to be playing meaningful hockey by now. Coach John Hiller didn't dodge the problem after the game. He put it squarely on the room.
After the loss, Hiller gave his players a blunt message: nobody is coming to rescue this group. "Work your way out. It's the only way. You can't hope. You can't be average. You've got to work your way out. Every guy."
Fans Are Running Out of Patience
Most Toronto supporters would agree the group needs to work harder to climb out of this hole. Where they might push back is on the idea that the team has been bad every night. Hiller saw a club that played some solid hockey for long stretches against Colorado. The trouble is that good stretches haven't added up to wins, and in a tight standings picture, that distinction matters less and less.
Fan reaction on the team's social channels is considerably harsher. Many of them see a team that has been poor more often than not, and they're questioning several decisions, chief among them the continued push to start Sergei Bobrovsky. Some of that frustration is clearly about confidence. Their fix is to hand the net to Anthony Stolarz.
The goaltending numbers give that argument some fuel. Bobrovsky stopped 22 of 27 shots against Colorado, but he has allowed at least three goals in 12 of his 13 starts since arriving in Toronto. Hiller isn't pinning the slide on the netminder, though. He sees the same inconsistency running through the lineup, and that's the more useful read for anyone trying to diagnose what's going wrong.
Hiller Owns the Criticism
"Our results suck. You can write those stories. There's no question, and we deserve that," Hiller said. That's an unusually direct admission from a coach, and it matters. Twenty games into the season, the team still hasn't found a way to string together enough sustained, winning hockey. Owning the results is the first step toward changing them, but it doesn't change the standings.
The specific problem Hiller pointed to was how the group handles big moments. Jack Roslovic tied the game, and Toronto gave up the go-ahead goal almost immediately after. Hiller didn't single out one culprit. He described a sequence of poor choices. "We made multiple poor decisions. Multiple," he said.
That's the part worth paying attention to. Teams can survive a single mistake, because a teammate often covers for it. What hurts is when several players, especially experienced ones, misread the play in quick succession. The margin for error disappears, and a game that looked controllable slips away in about a minute.
Where the Maple Leafs Found Some Life
There were positives, and they're worth naming. Darren Raddysh and Easton Cowan each scored a goal and added an assist. Roslovic chipped in his ninth of the season. Auston Matthews's line also controlled much of the territorial game, outshooting MacKinnon's unit 19-8 in shot attempts and keeping MacKinnon off the scoresheet. When a top line does its job like that, it gives a coach something to build on, even in a loss.
Depth scoring and a dominant top line are a good combination, but they only help if the rest of the lineup stops giving the game back. That's the through-line of Hiller's postgame comments. The talent is there. The decision-making under pressure isn't yet.
What Comes Next
Toronto's next test comes Thursday against the Minnesota Wild, who arrive with a 13-3-4 record. On paper it's a difficult assignment, and it could be exactly the kind of game that forces the group to play with the urgency Hiller is asking for. Hiller says he likes his team and believes it will come around. The question is whether the belief shows up in the details: cleaner reads in the defensive zone, fewer rushed decisions in tight moments and a goaltending situation that gives the group confidence.
My read is that Hiller is right about where the fix starts. Individual accountability isn't a slogan when a team is four losses deep. It means every player asking whether he's making the right play in the 58th minute, not just the 10th. The Leafs don't need a rescue. They need a full 60 minutes from every man on the ice, and they need it on Thursday. Fans have been frustrated, but a few convincing efforts would bring them right back.
