Items Maple Leafs Coach Jim Hiller Must Address Quickly
New Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller has a clear mandate to steer his team back into the Stanley Cup playoffs. What are the things Hiller needs to do to have success in Toronto and keep his job?
Video Transcript
But Ryan, surprise, surprise, Jim Hiller, who last coached the LA Kings and was an associate coach on Mike Babcock's staff way back when with the Leafs, has been tabbed as the next head coach.
So thoughts on this hire?
Yeah, my initial thoughts when I saw the news this morning was, "Huh.
All right."
I can't say I'm overwhelmed.
You know, Jim Hiller's probably most famous recently for blowing LA's first round series against Edmonton with a bad challenge, that completely turned around the series.
I know he had great defensive results with Toronto, when he was an associate coach and, and certainly they need help in that aspect.
To me, I'm just, I'm just not sure, and hey, I would love for him to prove me wrong, but is he a head coach or is he a very good associate coach in the NHL?
We've seen him have that role for a couple of different franchises and, you know, sometimes there are those guys that, you know, they, they will become head coaches for a couple of years but then, you know, it, it doesn't go well enough.
They, they can't get those teams to the next level, and you sort of say like, "Okay, maybe this guy is just an associate coach sort of in his bones."
So to me it's a, it's a bit of a risky move for the Leafs because, you know, this is the beginning of the John Shayka era as GM and, you know, is this the guy that you're gonna have behind the bench for five years?
That should be the plan.
I'm worried that it might be the guy that's two years.
Ooh.
I'm with you, Drew.
Like, an underwhelming choice.
You know, it wasn't one of the big names out there.
I don't even remember Hiller's name being floated out there.
Obviously a Bruce Cassidy c- would've come in with more currency.
But you know, he's got familiarity with the players.
Like, he coached Austin Matthews as a rookie in his first few years with the Leafs.
So do you think that might help in his sort of transition back to Toronto?
Yeah, I think so, and I think that the way the game works today, kinda like we talked about the Edmondson situation, like, there's no way that those elite players in Toronto would not sign off probably to some degree on them rehiring him.
So I know they had a good relationship with him.
I've actually known him for a long time.
He was coaching the Chilliwack Bruins who drafted me into the Western Hockey League, um- Nice many, many years ago.
But, so I am, I actually think, and you guys are gonna laugh at this because of you guys being in the media, but I think he too, took too much flak for that decision in LA.
There's so many things that, like they have a video coach upstairs who's normally telling the coach, like, what he thinks.
And yes, the head coach is the one who fi- makes the decision, but obviously that was a horrible decision for them.
But I think that he pretty much single-handedly took the blame for that, which honestly I kinda respected and he definitely did that with the media.
But to me this kinda just signals the direction that the Leafs are wanting to go in, and I think by that, I think it means, like, we are going to hang on to our core players for at least another year.
We're gonna try and make the playoffs this year, and then if we can't do that we're gonna blow the whole thing up.
So I think, like, to me that kinda signals why they didn't go with a Joe Pavelski or a, I mean, who knows what happened with a David Karl or whatever.
But I mean, I think to me it kinda signals that they want to give this core one more at least even full games with a solid head coach to try and be competitive right now, and if it can't happen they'll probably go in a different direction.
