As of the announcement on Wednesday, the Toronto Maple Leafs are now Jim Hiller’s team from behind the bench.
After several years of veteran teams and making the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Maple Leafs roster will be changing a little bit next season.
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Mixing with the veteran talent of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, and now Darren Raddysh will be youngsters such as Easton Cowan, whoever is selected first overall in the upcoming draft. Even 23-year-old Matthew Knies and 24-year-old Emil Andrae are young roster players for the Leafs going into next year.
It’ll be interesting to see how Hiller handles those younger players in the Maple Leafs’ roster, because when he was the head coach of the Los Angeles Kings from February 2024 to March 2026, he did not utilize his young players as much as he should have. And if that’s not the case, some did not blossom or develop into the player they should have been to this point.
It’s worth noting that Hiller’s tenure with Los Angeles began on an interim basis.
Two of the biggest young pieces to the Kings’ roster over the past couple of years have been center Quinton Byfield and defenseman Brandt Clarke.
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Byfield, a second overall pick in the 2020 draft, hasn’t seen an upward trend in terms of point production. Since recording a career high of 55 points with 20 goals in 2023-24, Byfield has never surpassed that point total, despite featuring in 81 and 79 games in each of the last two seasons.
It’s not like Byfield was held back in the lineup. In fact, his ice time increased notably over the last two years, logging an average of 20:01 of ice time last season as the second-line center. He also filled in for Anze Kopitar on the top line, who missed 15 games with injuries.
As for Clarke, the eighth overall pick in the 2021 draft, he did not get much ice time on Los Angeles’ back end under Hiller’s management.
In 147 games with Hiller behind the bench, Clarke averaged 17:16 of ice time, which is less than Cody Ceci, Brian Dumoulin and Joel Edmundson. Despite limited ice time, Clarke is the defenseman who has played the most games under Hiller, and has the second-best points-per-game average among blueliners at 0.46, just behind Drew Doughty‘s 0.47.
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He’s also scored the most points among Kings defensemen in Hiller’s tenure, recording 14 goals and 67 points.
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Jordan Spence and Alex Turcotte are another pair of young, but promising players who have been limited under Hiller.
Before being traded to the Ottawa Senators for this past season, Spence played parts of four years with the Kings.
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In his final year with Los Angeles, Spence played 79 games and registered four goals and 28 points while averaging just 16:47 per game. He also finished fourth on the team in plus-minus with a plus-23 from the 2024-25 campaign.
Last year with the Senators, his average ice time jumped to 18:44, and he was a pretty important piece for their defense with Nick Jensen out of the lineup for a chunk of the season. Naturally, Spence went on to have the best season of his NHL career so far, putting up seven goals and 31 points for Ottawa.
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Turcotte was another very high draft pick, fifth overall in 2019, who didn’t pan out as a difference maker and couldn’t break out of the bottom six under Hiller. Turcotte’s production isn’t completely in the hands of Hiller’s methods, but the truth is that he didn’t blossom, and Hiller was his head coach for most of it.
In 162 career games, Turcotte has never reached 10 goals or more than 25 points in a campaign.
There will be multiple younger players in Toronto’s NHL roster next season, and some with very bright futures. With some critical years of development coming up for those Maple Leafs youngsters, Hiller will need to do his fair share of teaching and allow those players to see the ice.
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