Six straight losses now, the last one a 1-0 shutout against an Oilers team that came into Toronto at 14-3-3 and left at 15-3-3. Devon Levi stopped 19 shots for his first NHL shutout. John Tavares had what looked like a tying goal in the third period waved off after video review ruled he'd redirected it with his stick above the crossbar. That's the game, and it doesn't indict Jim Hiller on its own.
The argument going around Toronto right now is that Hiller is out-coached, that the staff is guessing, that the organization is too scared to make a change while the season circles the drain. I get the impulse. Six in a row will do that to a fan base, especially one that's watched this team's offense shrink into point shots and low-danger chances. But look at what actually happened Saturday before you hand Hiller the blame for it. Toronto held the best offensive team in the league to a single goal. They put a puck across the goal line in regulation and lost it to a stick-height review. This is a team one inch of stick from tying an elite opponent on the road and snapping a six-game skid, and it just didn't get the break.
The real issue sits upstream of the bench. A team with Toronto's talent shouldn't be scoring this little in the first place. That's on the roster the GM built. When the group needed a push with three minutes left and the season on the line, Hiller's answer was a line of Gavin McKenna, Teddy Blueger and Dakota Joshua. That shows how little scoring punch this roster actually has. It says nothing about whether Hiller can draw up a system. Firing a coach makes sense when the system's broken. Here, the issue is forwards who can't finish.
RatingAuston Matthews said this week that Hiller has kept the group "grounded and together" through the frustration. That's how the captain sees it, from inside the room. By all accounts, Hiller's job isn't in jeopardy anytime soon. The pressure is mounting publicly while the people running the organization aren't moving, and it should stay that way. Six losses into a stretch already drawing comparisons to the franchise's worst stretches in decades is bad. The captain's on record saying the room hasn't cracked. Six bad games don't change that.
If the front office wants to make a change, it should start upstairs. Toronto's GM built a roster that can hold the league's hottest team to one goal and still lose because nobody can finish. That's a talent and depth failure. It's a lot easier to fire a coach than admit the roster's wrong. His forwards lost this game by not scoring. The organization will lose the season if it panics now and goes hunting for a scapegoat behind the bench instead of fixing the roster in front of it.
