Digesting Chayka's first trade and the hiring of Hiller as Leafs head coach - MLHS Podcast Ep. 121

Anthony, let's start with the coach here.

Hiller was not a name that I think was heard often in the weeks leading up.

Of course, when you have 55 candidates, there will be ones that people don't know about.

But a bit of a surprising pick and one that I think, I don't know how you feel about it.

Been mulling over for a lot of today, in part just because it wasn't really ready for this announcement.

What's your first thoughts here?

Honestly, my first thought was the Leafs have done a pretty good job of keeping things quiet.

I mean, he wasn't even named as a finalist by anyone.

That was the first time I've heard his name in general in relation to this search, and...

I kind of kicked myself personally thinking about it after, just going, you could see the logic of the fit, which we'll get to.

But, I mean, two things happened in the past few days, and no one was reporting a Joseph Waltrade was imminent, and nobody was circling around Hiller in any capacity whatsoever.

I mean, his name was not even...

It wasn't even a leaf blowing through the wind.

Like it just, it was not present.

And so I think it's interesting coming off the tree living era.

I think it was, I think this was a big point of emphasis for them with this new, new regime to say the leak, the leaks have to stop.

Information getting out has to stop when we're ready to announce things on our timeline.

That's when they're going to come out.

And yeah, It makes for an interesting shift because I think you still get a lot of speculation that occurs.

But at this point, if you're paying attention as a fan, which to me, if you're listening to this podcast, you are a fan who pays attention.

You just can't really put much validity in what you're hearing from quote unquote insiders, I think at this point.

Yeah, the speculation gets less credible when it's not correct, right? If more and more things happen, people are like, here's what we think might go down, and here's where the lease could be at, and then that doesn't happen, and what proceeds to happen are totally unexpected things, people are going to pick up on that as a pattern.

And I think that's part of – I'm not saying this is a huge benefit – Because, you know, front office is operated in situations where news gets out and it hasn't totally tanked them or anything.

But by going outside the kind of traditional candidate pool, by going with Chaik and Sundin, guys who have not really been in the business in the last decade or so, You don't have as many of their relationships that way, where when you hire someone from kind of the old boys club, this guy's linked to that guy's linked to that guy.

There's sort of networks of people that you're feeding into.