NEWARK, N.J. — “What do I do?”
A member of the Toronto Maple Leafs social media team was there to snap a photo of Dennis Hildeby holding a commemorative puck from his first NHL win. The 23-year-old wanted to know how he was supposed to pose.
It was the final first on a day of firsts for the towering goaltender.
In no world would the Leafs have expected Hildeby to start their second game of the regular season, let alone collect their first win (on a night that saw Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander all remain point-less for the second consecutive game). But that’s exactly how it played out in an unlikely series of events that followed Joseph Woll suffering another injury the day before the season opener and Anthony Stolarz starting in his place.
A gigantic question mark heading into the year — and a gigantic question mark still — goaltending has been an early, very early, positive for the Leafs. Hildeby’s 22-save win over a Sheldon Keefe-coached New Jersey Devils team that throttled the Buffalo Sabres in Europe came a day after Stolarz delivered a solid performance in a 1-0 opening-night loss in Montreal.
Stolarz and Hildeby have combined to stop 48 of 51 shots for a toasty .941 save percentage.
It was only two games (tiny sample size warning), but two games that went off script and could have played out much differently after Woll’s unexpected exit from the picture.
Hildeby wasn’t supposed to be here at all, let alone starting.
Leafs coach Craig Berube even wondered after Wednesday’s game whether the Leafs might just go back to Stolarz for a second consecutive night only to pivot, with the bigger picture in mind, to Hildeby.
Hildeby said he found out sometime on Wednesday that he would get the net and make his first NHL start.
“A lot of emotions for me to handle,” he said of the experience. “I just wanted to make it like any other game. Of course, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible, too.”
He didn’t want to become too emotional, he said.
That’s why he avoided calling his family back home in Sweden when he found out he was starting, insisting on text messages instead. Even though it was the middle of the night over there, they all watched Hildeby sit on the bench for the Leafs season opener in Montreal.
A night later, bleary-eyed, they got to see him in action.
Maybe his biggest stop of the evening came on Jack Hughes during a New Jersey power play in the opening frame. He earned a whole whack of stick taps from teammates on the bench for that one and heard a chorus of cheers from them all afterward when he entered the Leafs dressing room at the Prudential Center, a win in place.
“He came up big,” Berube said. “I thought he made some real good saves for us. I’m very happy for him.
“To me,” the Leafs coach added, “he looked pretty calm in net overall.”
Hildeby said his experience with the team last season, which saw him operating exclusively as a backup, helped him feel more comfortable this time around. He knew his teammates. He knew how things worked in the NHL world — sort of. He still had to ask a member of the equipment staff, in the aftermath of his first victory, how much time exactly he had to make the bus. (Fifteen minutes.)
The Leafs just need some stability in goal this season.
It was mostly turbulence last season. There was Ilya Samsonov’s porous first half, which led to him passing through waivers untouched and briefly falling out of the league entirely. There was Woll missing almost three months with a high-ankle sprain. There was a pretty up-and-down performance generally.
The Leafs ranked 24th in the NHL during the regular season with a team save percentage of just .893.
In the playoffs, Jeremy Swayman ultimately won the goalie battle for the Bruins — with Woll outperforming him in games 5 and 6 only to miss Game 7 with injury.
The Leafs tried to get eventual Devil Jacob Markstrom in the offseason, only to fall short in their trade efforts. Which led them to Stolarz in free agency and an extension for Woll that won’t take effect until next season.
It’s a crease with the look of potential, but also a crease with real uncertainty. Health, primarily, for Woll. And for Stolarz, a question of whether top-tier performance in small doses as a backup will persist with a heavier workload (and also, health).
Beyond those two, the Leafs have Hildeby, a promising young goalie who shined as a rookie for the Marlies last season, and Matt Murray, who didn’t play an NHL game last season.
What does this start mean in the grand scheme of things? Maybe nothing. It’s obviously far too soon to tell. Goaltending will be a season-long storyline with no clear answer until the finish line. But it’s an encouraging beginning no less.
(Top photo by Rich Graessle / NHLI via Getty Images)
