'We Are What We Are': Head Coach Jim Hiller Faces Brutal Reality Check With Struggling Maple Leafs

There's no other way to describe the Toronto Maple Leafs right now other than to say that they are struggling this season. Losing their fourth straight home game in regulation, a 6-3 defeat to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday, the Maple Leafs have an 8-10-2 record in the first 20 games of this season.

They sit seventh in the Atlantic Division and have a .450 win percentage. In this unforgiving division, the Maple Leafs are losing opportunities to climb the standings. And the chances of making the Stanley Cup playoffs are slowly dying, despite being just 20 games into the year.

Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller was blunt about the team's performance, and it was arguably the most critical he's been of his team since being hired.

"We make multiple poor decisions, multiple," he said after the game on Tuesday. And that's usually how hockey works. Sometimes you make a bad decision, and hopefully somebody cleans it up. You can make one, two, three poor decisions in a row. And veteran players, can't have it. You just can't have it."

Hiller was referencing Colorado's fourth goal of the game, which came just under a minute after Jack Roslovic's 3-3 equalizer early in the third period. Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog tapped in his second of the game off a pass from former Maple Leafs center Nazem Kadri. Landeskog was all alone in front of the net when he received the pass.

"That's how you lose," Hiller added. "It's just plain and simple. That's how hockey is. You have to be on it."

In general, this is not where the Maple Leafs envisioned being at this point in the year. With an abundance of changes to the roster and a fresh slate going into 2026-27, the team isn't far off, record-wise, from 2025-26.

In the first 20 games last year, Toronto was 9-9-2, which is better than what they are currently at, and that team went on to win the draft lottery, finishing 28th in the NHL.

"I don't want to make excuses, so our record is what it is. It's deserved," Hiller said. "I think we could have a better record, but we don't. We are what we are. And it's a lot of different things. The goal against, let's start there."

The Leafs have the fourth-worst defense in the NHL, allowing 69 goals in 20 games, averaging 3.45 goals against per game. Only the San Jose Sharks, Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks have been worse in that category.

Another aspect contributing to Toronto's downfall is the penalty kill. To start the year, the Leafs' penalty kill was among the best in NHL history, executing at 97.4 percent as of Oct. 20. In fact, on several occasions, the unbeatable penalty kill was the reason for many of the Leafs' points in the standings.

But the penalty kill hasn't been nearly as good lately, allowing power-play goals in seven straight games before this Avalanche outing. They've also taken the third-most minor penalties in the NHL, and a penalty kill as good as the Maple Leafs' was at the beginning of this season can only be so sustainable with that many opportunities.

"We've had penalties at inopportune times," Toronto's coach said. "There's been a lot of things. But I like the guys. I like the team. We're going to come out of it. It just really, really sucks. And the only way I told you is stay together and work."

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