One of the few bright spots for the Toronto Maple Leafs in their loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday, October 15, was Kirill Marchenko’s performance.
The 26-year-old forward scored his first hat trick with the Toronto franchise, helping the Leafs take a 4-2 lead.
However, Jim Hiller’s team let their guard down, and following John Tavares’ injury and some questionable decisions by the head coach, Toronto squandered the lead and lost 5-4 in overtime.
After the game, Marchenko spoke to the media and, beyond praising his outstanding performance that night, was self-critical and even took responsibility for mistakes he believes he made.
Kirill Marchenko Takes Blame for Maple Leafs’ Overtime Loss
“We can’t lose these games, and especially overtime, my mistake. When (Owen) Power scores, yeah, I can, I can do better work there too, for sure. And I don’t know what we can say, but we need to just learn from this game and not give up on the future. Same thing,” he first said.
He added, “I will remember this night for sure, but it’s so, so bad when we lose the game. And winning is more important. And I’m kind of frustrated too because it’s, again, my mistake in overtime.”
“You say it’s your mistake,” a reporter told him, to which he answered, “Kind of, I have to look again, but it’s (Owen) Power; he just jumped by me and scored the goal. Obviously, it’s easy. And I will clean that up for sure. And if they score like four, four overtime, we need to find a way to win these games. It’s so important for us.”
Despite Marchenko’s self-criticism, the 26-year-old forward was the least of the Maple Leafs fans’ targets after the game, with head coach Hiller being the main target of criticism. Some fans even called for his firing.
“FIRE JIM HILLER IMMEDIATELY,” wrote one fan on X (Twitter). “Jim Hiller is an abusive creep. He takes pleasure in hurting teenagers and needs to be stopped now before it gets any worse,” another one expressed.
“I had my doubts from day 1 on the Jim Hiller hiring. Tonight justified that. How do you run three lines, Tavares goes down, and you still won’t play McKenna or McKewan? You play 9 forwards after a road trip in a different time zone? He su—- in LA too,” another user explained.
This article was originally published on HEAVY
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