For an early regular-season game in mid-October, Thursday night’s Atlantic Division clash between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres was quite the eventful one.
Kirill Marchenko scored a hat trick with three beautiful goals, the Sabres stormed back from two down to win in overtime, and that wasn’t even the main talking point after the game. Instead, it was Gavin McKenna seeing just 6:36 of ice time, which included not touching the ice from the middle of the second period onward.
Nobody knew exactly why the rookie was benched, and head coach Jim Hiller’s comments after the game didn’t make it much clearer.
“You know what? That was my decision. We went for a stretch. I think we had those penalties. I wanted to get him out there. He sat through the penalties, and then I didn’t get him out there. You know, through that stretch, and then in the last few minutes of the period, we’re just trying to, you know, get out of the period. I guess you would say. And then now, as I’ve sat him for so long, and he sits in the intermission, so I probably should have got him out there early in the third. I didn’t. So I’ll talk to him about that,”
The 18-year-old McKenna has five points (two goals, three assists) through his first eight NHL games.
It was understandable that McKenna didn’t see the ice at times during a penalty-filled second period, but once Mattias Samuelsson tied things up in the third, the Maple Leafs needed an offensive spark, and McKenna is certainly somebody who could have provided that.
In the end, it seems like Hiller is trying to keep this from becoming a bigger story that it needs to, which, in the Toronto market, is a much better idea than calling out his rookie and causing a major stir so early in the season.
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