The Maple Leafs Had a Chance to Have Bobrovsky's Back

There's more to coaching than making line changes, drawing up systems and deciding when to use a timeout. Sometimes, it's about sending a message to your players. And I thought Toronto Maple Leafs coach Jim Hiller missed an opportunity to send a pretty important one against Utah.

The second Utah goal deserves another look. Barrett Hayton made contact with Sergei Bobrovsky in the crease, knocking the goaltender out of position. Toronto elected not to challenge the goal. We don't know whether a review would have overturned it, but the contact clearly affected the play.

Hiller could have done a lot of positive things by challenging the goal.

What interested me most, though, wasn't whether Hiller would have won the challenge. It was what challenging that goal could have said to his goaltender.

Think about it from Bobrovsky's perspective. He's doing his job, trying to make a save, and an opposing player gets into his crease and makes contact. That contact disrupted his ability to make the save, and it was hard to see how he could have been expected to handle the play normally. His coach has a chance to stand up and say, in effect, "I don't believe that's your fault. You're our goaltender, and we're going to protect you."

Even if the officials upheld the goal, the message would have been delivered. Hiller would have shown Bobrovsky that he had his back. That's not a small thing for a goaltender who has faced plenty of scrutiny.

Hiller could have sent his penalty kill a message, too.

There was another opportunity here, too. Toronto's penalty kill has struggled, and this could have been a moment to challenge the group to take more responsibility for protecting its goaltender. Keeping opponents out of the crease isn't just a goaltending issue. It's a team responsibility.

Would a successful challenge have changed the outcome? Perhaps. Would an unsuccessful one have created problems? Certainly. And Hiller had his logic down. I understand why Hiller hesitated. Bobrovsky was outside the blue paint, and the coaching staff apparently wasn't confident a challenge would succeed. But sometimes a coach has to consider more than the odds of winning a review.

That logic might have been correct. But the Maple Leafs lost the game anyway. Even if it were, sometimes you have to lose a small battle to build something more important. A coach who shows his players that he'll stand up for them, even when the decision is contentious, can build trust that lasts much longer than one game.

I get it that the decision is a tough one from a technical point of view.

I'm not suggesting Hiller had an easy decision. But I wonder whether he was too cautious here. The season is still young. Toronto has time to establish what kind of team it wants to be. Players need to know that they'll be supported, that their coach will stand behind them, and that protecting one another is part of the job.

Bobrovsky didn't need a public defence after every goal. But on this one, I think he could have used a little help from his coach. This challenge could have been culture-building. I might be in the minority, but I think Hiller missed a huge leadership opportunity.