By the time Koblar makes an impact, and why Kiefer Sherwood is too risky a trade target: Folders

The rise of Dennis Hildeby

Last season, Hildeby found his way into six games, all starts and all games he would play in their entirety. Two of them could be called good starts, and a third was a performance you’d accept from your backup netminder, but the other three performances, especially the two against the Blue Jackets, showed a goaltender who needed more time before returning to the NHL. Hildeby’s time in the AHL didn’t make a case for him aiming for the NHL this season, and seemingly the Leafs didn’t need him to push. Until now.

Circumstances have made Hildeby ‘the man’ at the moment and ensured that he was deployed earlier than expected this season. Woll’s leave of absence, combined with Cayden Primeau being unable to fill the backup role, brought him to the NHL, and Stolarz’s injury kept him here. Hildeby’s five starts and .890 save percentage on the Marlies should show that there was no rush on the Maple Leafs side to get him to the NHL, but what he has done with the Maple Leafs is encouraging.

Hildeby still has just three starts for the Maple Leafs this season and while the results haven’t been too conclusive, all three have seen Dennis with 30+ shots (47, 37, 35) and the worst of those from a save percentage perspective was .892. In relief this year, aided by some scoring effects, Hildeby’s results were impressive enough to push his season save percentage to .919, and Hildeby’s goals saved above expectations per 60 minutes rank 4th in the NHL (1,064) among goaltenders who have played in five or more games. Strictly speaking, he is the Leafs’ best goaltender this season.

Hildeby is definitely worth a look now, and the Leafs don’t really have a choice in that regard anyway. And while my intention was to write about how December presented an interesting opportunity to involve Hildeby in the upcoming games against the Sharks, Blackhawks and Predators, it is entirely possible that Hildeby will take on the bulk of the next seven games depending on the expected return dates for Woll or Stolarz.

Regardless of the results, this is a great opportunity for Hildeby to make his case, the Leafs to know what they have and whether moving a goaltender is something they can consider in the future, and worst case scenario, the Leafs will ultimately send Hildeby back to the Marlies with the best understanding of where his game needs to evolve, potentially making him a stronger prospect.

Buyer Beware Kiefer Sherwood

Just say no to late bloomers on the heater.

Sherwood has found the right coach in Adam Foote. He knows how to use it to produce offensively and is comfortable just sending it across the ice the rest of the time, hitting anything that moves in the wrong color jersey. This is possible.

The catch is that Sherwood is a pending unrestricted free agent and may want to be paid as a potential 30-goal forward, rather than as the bottom six forwards have shown in recent seasons, which is still a nice step forward after being an AHL call-up for most of his career up to that point. The Canucks know him best, he’s had his two most successful seasons with that organization and they want to move him, that’s the first red flag when it comes to Sherwood.

Sherwood also has a shooting percentage above 20% so far this season. Considering the last time something similar happened with a hard-hitting bottom-six winger in Vancouver, who they overpaid for Dakota Joshua, it’s unlikely they’re willing to go that route again. And while Sherwood’s 2024-2025 season still yielded 19 goals with a 13% shooting percentage, which isn’t a bad number, it seems unlikely that the Canucks portray him as a 30-year-old winger who still has that as his career highlight and instead want to cash in on someone who is playing unsustainably well.

Rather than dump here a table of shot differentials, expected goal differentials, and even goal differentials to further illustrate that Sherwood doesn’t drive the game, is a problem defensively, and doesn’t have much to offer if he’s not as fit as he was in Vancouver, I’ll just ask how many times do the Maple Leafs need to learn the same lesson?

And while there’s nothing connecting the Maple Leafs to Sherwood, Brad Treliving’s desire for a bigger, stronger Leafs team means preemptively saying no to Sherwood.

Tinus Luc Koblar finds his professional game

I think about this tweet a lot when it comes to the Maple Leafs prospects. It applies universally (hence the tweet), but given the somewhat barren landscape when it comes to potential future stars in the Maple Leafs organization, this always hits home.

It’s a source of comfort when it comes to the Maple Leafs trading someone like Fraser Minten and considering that his career chances are so high that Toronto will deeply regret trading him for a bottom-six defenseman.

It’s a source of pain to consider that Easton Cowan’s junior grades don’t change the fact that he’s far more likely to be on his way to becoming a serviceable middle-six forward in the NHL than a future all-star.

The article is littered with encouraging takeaways. Koblar’s comfort playing against older competitors and quickly adapting to the physical and defensive zone demands of the game. Signs of attacking creativity are there too, but the ‘your favorite team has a steal’ moment comes from the use of Koblar.

Koblar only hovered around ten minutes per night through the first three games, common for teenagers in the SHL. Since then the minimum he has played is 12 minutes, but generally in the range of 16-17 minutes as a middle six centre. The article optimistically notes that Koblar could end the season as Leksand’s top center. The caveat here is that Leksand is the bottom team in the league.

Tinus Luc Koblar’s statistics may seem disappointing with 21 games played. Three goals and two assists are largely a product of largely the bottom six forwards on a team with poor results. It won’t be an accurate story and it will be interesting to see if a role in the top six pushes these numbers up significantly.

You can’t really talk about where Koblar is without thinking about what should happen next for him. It appears that developing an everyday player in the SHL is ahead of schedule developmentally, but the next question should be whether or not Koblar’s growth would be stunted by staying on a bad team. Will a bad team bring in new coaches or find players who would push Koblar down next season? And is this uncertainty enough reason to bring him to North America? Should the Marlies be the plan at this point anyway?

Looking at the situation individually and motivated by my own curiosity to see more of Koblar and give him a chance to play a bigger role, the Marlies seem like the right course of action. Koblar and Holinka should represent an encouraging youth movement for the Marlies next season and while Koblar can’t definitively be called a star, it’s nice that his development is ahead of schedule.

PRESENTED BY VIVID CHAIRS