What the Maple Leafs can learn from Adin Hill’s Stanley Cup final run with Golden Knights

Unless we see some Florida Panthers magic reignite as they return home, the monumental stick-paddle stop made by Vegas Golden Knights goalie Adin Hill off Nick Cousins in Game 1 will be forever known as The Save. And that’s not how this is supposed to work.

If anyone was supposed to be crowned for making The Save during this Stanley Cup final it’s probably Sergei Bobrovsky, the $70-million (U.S.) man the Panthers signed in 2019 to lead them to the promised land.

Yet it’s Hill, at a bargain-basement price of $2.1 million, who finds himself two wins away from lifting the Stanley Cup.

“Very happy for him. He’s a guy that’s been through some injuries this year and had to work his way back in the lineup,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said about his goalie following the Game 2 win. “He’s done a great job for us obviously, and a big reason why we’re here.”

This trend of undervalued goalies helping their team win it all will only confuse NHL clubs further about how to build a championship team. Case in point: the Toronto Maple Leafs.

How bold does newly appointed general manager Brad Treliving want to be after watching this Stanley Cup final play out?

Hill is a 27-year-old who Vegas acquired for a fourth-round pick a season earlier to compete for backup minutes before starting in a career-high 25 games this season. Now he’s outplaying an opponent making almost five times his salary, two games into the Stanley Cup final. Hill’s journey to this point could push Treliving toward playing it safe when it comes to committing salary to a goaltender. That would mean looking within his own organization instead.

In that case, the Leafs could bring back restricted free agent Ilya Samsonov for a reasonable cost and pair him with Joseph Woll, who some believe could take over the Leafs No. 1 spot by the end of next season.

Mike McKenna, a former NHL goalie who does a great job assessing goaltenders for DailyFaceoff, believes that idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.

“I’d like to have Samsonov because I know that Joseph Woll is the guy that I believe in, and I think that by the end of next season he might be knocking on the door to take over No. 1 and do so at a more affordable cap hit,” McKenna said on the “Real Kyper and Bourne” show Tuesday when asked if the Leafs would rather sign Hill, a pending free agent, or Samsonov next season.

McKenna even went one step further and mentioned Woll had a similar ceiling to Dallas Stars goalie Jake Oettinger. That, to me, is crazy talk, though I’ll give McKenna the benefit of the doubt as he was crazy enough to want to play the position in the first place.

The other option facing Treliving is to go bolder and explore finding a veteran — obviously a recipe that’s worked plenty, too.

As much as the Core Four get blamed for all the past playoff failures, only once has a Leafs goalie outplayed his opponent in a round in seven years. Samsonov got the job done against an exhausted Andrei Vasilevskiy in the first round, but a disappointing outcome against Florida makes him anything but a lock to return.

What should intrigue Treliving is the number of quality goalies available this summer: Connor Hellebuyck (Winnipeg Jets), Carter Hart (Philadelphia Flyers), Thatcher Demko (Vancouver Canucks) and Jeremy Swayman (Boston Bruins) could all be had for the right price. Juuse Saros from Nashville may the biggest prize of all for the right mix of draft picks and prospects. He also has two years left at a very affordable $5-million average annual value.

The Leafs could conceivably go any route they choose in that regard, but it would most likely mean giving up one of their Core Four players.

While Hill has made the case for rolling with the diamonds in the rough, it is a rarity to find a goalie who’s so reliable at that cost. And the fact is, with all the cap space they have invested in four forwards, playoff reliability in goal was never a guarantee for these Leafs.

In all likelihood, Hill’s run with Vegas is an anomaly the Leafs should ignore. They’ll have to cash out to make space for a true difference-maker if they want to be playing into June next year.

It will be interesting to see how humbled Mike Babcock returns as an NHL coach with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Word is money and term were not high on his priority list compared to restoring his reputation when he left Toronto ... It’s believed RBC was hoping to get hockey ambassador Auston Matthews to participate in the pro-am Wednesday at Oakdale, but he decided to take a pass. I wonder if the media focus on his next contract played any part in his decision ... The three-way trade involving Columbus, L.A. and Philadelphia is intriguing since we usually never see these types of trades until after the playoffs. Which leads me to believe we may need to brace ourselves for one of the most active off-seasons in recent memory when it comes to trades. Look for the Chicago Blackhawks to set the free-agent market early by signing 40-point man Andreas Athanasiou to a two-year, $8.5-million deal.

On Michael Bunting not returning to the Leafs: Some NHL teams tell me the free-agent forward could get between $4.5 million and $5 million per season on a long-term deal based on the two-year, $8.5-million deal Andreas Athanasiou got with the Blackhawks. Toronto might be priced out.

Nick Kypreos is a former NHL player, Stanley Cup champion and current host of Sportsnet’s Real Kyper and Bourne radio show. He is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star and is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @RealKyper