Pin the whole 5-4 overtime loss on Jim Hiller's game management and you've let a few other people off the hook. Owen Power scored the winner in the extra frame, Buffalo rallied, and Toronto's defense gave up five goals on a night Kirill Marchenko dragged them back into it with a hat trick in his 300th NHL game. A coach doesn't make the saves or clear the front of the net, and this result doesn't fall on him alone.
One thing is entirely on him, with no roster excuse available: he benched the No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft for the back half of a tie game. Gavin McKenna played 6:36. His last shift came with 9:40 left in the second period, the score tied. He never played again, not in the third period, not in overtime. You can argue about the blue line all night, but you can't argue about that. One man made that choice, and he made it over and over as the minutes ran out.
Owning it afterward was the right instinct. It still doesn't answer the question. Hiller insisted the benching had nothing to do with McKenna's performance, then allowed that he "probably should've got him out" in the third period. Those two statements don't sit comfortably together. If the kid wasn't playing badly, and the game was there to be won, what exactly was the plan that required your most dangerous young player to watch it from the boards?
The fatigue defense has a little meat on it. John Tavares went down early in the third after an awkward collision with Josh Norris, and losing a center mid-game scrambles a bench and shortens a rotation. Fine. But McKenna wasn't the one who got hurt, and a disrupted lineup means every available player should be getting shifts. Leaning harder on your veterans while the rookie goes cold on the bench is a decision, and it's the decision that lost the room its patience.
Toronto surrendered a lead and let Buffalo climb all the way back to force overtime. That's a personnel problem. A thinner defensive group than this city wants to admit is a front-office job, and it's going to cost Hiller games no matter how he manages the last ten minutes. It's also separate from why the best teenager in the sport sat for 32 minutes and 54 seconds.
There's a shadow over all of it, too. When the job came open, Vegas granted Toronto permission to interview Bruce Cassidy, and the Leafs passed and hired Hiller instead. That call belongs to the people above him, and it's the one that gets re-examined every time a close game slips away like this one did.
Spread the blame on the loss itself. The goals against, the blown lead, the overtime winner: share those around. But the benching is Hiller's alone, and it's the thing that should actually worry Toronto. Losing an October game in overtime is survivable. A coach who doesn't trust his franchise rookie in the moments that matter is a much longer problem.
