Morgan Rielly walks into Toronto Maple Leafs training camp this week knowing head coach Jim Hiller is counting on him to turn things around fast.
Rielly is the longest-tenured Leaf in the room, and he's coming off a season that got ugly. He finished with 36 points and a minus-18 rating over 78 games.
That's the worst two-way stretch of his career, and Toronto fans noticed. His name spent the summer bouncing around the trade rumor mill.
The speculation only got louder once the Leafs signed Darren Raddysh, a defenceman who put up 22 goals and 70 points last season. Suddenly Rielly's spot didn't look guaranteed.
He didn't get traded. But the uncertainty was real, and Rielly has talked about it publicly, telling the Toronto Sun there was doubt heading into the summer.
Hiller has coached Rielly before, back when he was an assistant in Toronto, and that history matters now. The plan appears to be simple: less minutes, less weight on his shoulders, more room to actually produce.
If Raddysh takes over as the go-to option on the right side of the power play, Rielly gets to play the game he's built his career on instead of covering for a shaky defensive corps.
Auston Matthews looks for a fresh start under Hiller
Auston Matthews has his own version of this story. He played 60 of 82 games this past season and finished with 27 goals, 26 assists and a minus-4 rating.
Those are modest numbers for a $13,250,000 cap hit and a player who's used to leading the league in goals. The captain knows it too.
Craig Berube ran a defence-first, dump-and-chase system that never really fit what Matthews does best. Hiller's arrival changes that entire equation.
Pair that shift in style with a full training camp alongside Gavin McKenna and a stronger point option on the power play in Raddysh, and Matthews has every reason to look like himself again.
He's also got a new contract coming after the 2027-28 season. Nothing focuses a superstar quite like a payday on the horizon.
Then there's McKenna himself, the first overall pick walking into a market that chews up rookies who don't produce immediately. He's not guaranteed a smooth landing just because of where he was drafted.
Handing a teenager top-six minutes next to Matthews and William Nylander is a bet, and it's the kind of bet that either pays off big or turns into a training camp storyline nobody wants.
Is asking a rookie to carry that kind of expectation fair? Probably not. Does it matter to a fan base that hasn't watched a deep playoff run in years? Not even a little.
The Leafs bottom-six carries its own tension too. Dakota Joshua and Steven Lorentz have no ties to this new regime, and neither do newcomers Brandon Duhaime and Teddy Blueger.
None of that group should feel safe. Toronto finished 28th overall with a minus-46 goal differential and closed the year on a seven-game losing streak.
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That's the backdrop Hiller inherits. He's not just coaching a roster. He's coaching a group that needs to prove the last season was the exception, not the pattern.
Should the Maple Leafs have traded Morgan Rielly this offseason instead of keeping him?
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