Maple Leafs prospect checkpoint: How has Dennis Hildeby fared through 5 months of 2025-26?

Like Easton Cowan, this will likely be Dennis Hildeby‘s final season seen as a prospect in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. The hulking 6-foot-7 goaltender got his first taste of NHL action in 2024-25, only two years after being drafted in the fourth round of the 2022 NHL draft, and while his short stint last season revealed that he still needed some seasoning in the AHL, he has shown through 19 games in 2025-26 that he’s ready to be an NHL goaltender. And, if he wasn’t a victim of the numbers game with both Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz signed to multi-year deals, he’d probably still be with the team.

When Woll left the team to attend to a personal matter at the start of the season, the Maple Leafs initially played the caution card with Hildeby, opting to claim a more seasoned goaltender in Cayden Primeau off waivers to back up Stolarz and allow their young goaltender to continue growing his game in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the Toronto Marlies. When the Primeau experiment failed after only three games, Hildeby was recalled just a week before Woll’s return to the NHL, and cruelly enough, three days before Stolarz would suffer a long-term injury.

The Swedish netminder made his season debut on November 8 against the Boston Bruins after Stolarz was pulled following four goals on 19 shots, and stopped 19 of 20 shots in a 5-3 loss to the Bruins. Hildeby started his first game of the season on November 9, allowing five goals on 47 shots against the Carolina Hurricanes, and in the Maple Leafs’ next game, another tilt against Boston, Stolarz once again left early, this time due to an injury that would keep him on the shelf for a little over two months.

The story of Hildeby’s season has been providing relief for a Leafs goaltending tandem that was nowhere near as reliable as they were the year prior, sometimes to the fault of their own and sometimes due to uncontrollable circumstances like injury. Hildeby’s best stretch came in late November/early December, when he stopped 133 of 139 shots to the tune of a 3-0-2 record with a .957 save percentage (SV%).

Woll suffered an injury in a game against the Carolina Hurricanes not long after returning from his leave of absence, where Hildeby once again relieved him and finished the job, stopping all nine shots he faced in the third period of a 5-1 win. This was the only game of that five-game stretch that saw him enter the game in relief – he started each of the other four, picking up a win against the Pittsburgh Penguins, a 29-save shutout against the Tampa Bay Lightning, and two overtime losses against the Montreal Canadiens and San Jose Sharks. The Maple Leafs’ home game against the Vegas Golden Knights on January 23 marked the first time all season that the Leafs had both Woll and Stolarz dressed for a game, and Hildeby was sent to the Marlies shortly thereafter.

Hildeby’s progression to the NHL has been a quick one, going from an overager who put up stellar numbers as a backup in Sweden’s pro league in his draft year to a readily capable NHL goalie in the span of three years. His performance in 2025-26, a goals-against average (GAA) of 2.84 and a .910 SV% that outshines his record of 5-6-4 on paper, will likely force the Maple Leafs to have some conversations about how to manage their goaltending situation in the offseason, or perhaps as soon as the trade deadline.

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