The Toronto Maple Leafs held a formal introductory press conference regarding the hire of head coach Jim Hiller. GM John Chayka and the Leafs officially hired him on June 17.

In his media availability, he was asked what's important to him about how his team plays and which areas of the game he believes make a successful hockey club.

Hiller is the successor to Craig Berube, who was let go by Toronto's new brass on May 13. As Berube's replacement, Hiller brings some differences to the table. However, there are also some similarities that the two bench bosses share.

One aspect of Toronto's game that will change from Berube's leadership is how the offense is run. 

Berube continuously preached the importance of being direct, getting pucks to the net and playing north-south hockey, with very limited puck possession and time in the offensive end. By the sounds of it, Hiller intends to change that.

On Sportsnet's Real Kyper & Bourne show, Hiller spoke about how he wants the team to play more freely and instinctively with the puck. 

"We just have to find a way to celebrate offense again," Hiller said on the show. 

He also spoke on how to get Auston Matthews to produce offense at the level that he's known for. Hiller is going to look for Matthews and his team to have the puck, moving quickly with the puck and attacking.

"I would agree, in the last season, we didn't see that enough from him," Hiller said of Matthews. "We'll help him to do that, I know he wants to do that. Great offensive players love to have the puck. We'll look at ways to get him more of those types of opportunities."

In correlation to that, Hiller further touched on the importance of skating during his availability. He admitted that the speed of the game and the rate at which players must react and think, "has never been higher."

"That's why it's important to skate… we got to skate," Hiller pleaded. "One thing that I believe our team did in L.A. and that we'll have to do here is skate."

Under Berube, while he might've anticipated his team to skate hard, the truth is his lineup was slow and too heavy to be effective in terms of their speed. Hiller's demands coming into the team are highlighted by the ability to skate, and that could be a drastic difference from Berube's team to Hiller's team.

Although Hiller intends to improve his team's tempo compared to previous years, he shares a similarity with Berube's style, and that's his desire to have a team that checks.

"To win, you have to check," Hiller said bluntly. "You got to play good without the puck. This team is going to be able to skate and be able to put pressure on teams. But when we don't have the puck, we're going to check, and we're going to do a good job of that."

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