Personally I don't like Hyman that high on the lineup either, but right now, I think a somewhat fair argument could be made that he might be the only option and anyone else would just weaken the team (even without actually 'trying things out')
So the other LW options are Komo, JVR and Marleau - and yes I'm excluding Leivo because we all know he's only getting in to replace another offensive minded player (eg. JVR), he does not bring the PK skills of a Hyman, Komo etc.
Komo - Komo in my opinion right now is worse then Hyman offensively and not sure he's much of an upgrade defensively. To me personally, this is an easy no.
JVR - No doubt offensively could be a dangerous line, would be nice if we 'tried' it. But here's the thing, then we have a line of Hyman-Bozak-Brown
. There's no way any of you guys are going to convince me that's better for the team.
Marleau - This one is interesting. He's scoring a lot of goals right now........into empty nets. You could definitely argue that he still has a better ability to finish then Hyman, but no way I'm convinced at his age he would be as effective or even survive the wear and tear of playing on that line against top defensive players, because that's who will be matched up against Matthews-Nylander.
Hyman keeps taking hits and never goes down, guy is tough and its underrated how fast he is.
So could the Leafs try one of the above 3 guys in his spot, sure, but I'm not convinced that our team would be significantly better as a result. Now if we're suggesting moving Kappy from RW to that spot, that's interesting, but again, Komo-Plek-Hyman would be a bruttle line offensively. Kappy on that 4th line keeps other teams honest.
I think when we find a better LW replacement for Hyman who will not take away from weakening any of the other lines, that's then a different story. But I'm not sure we have that right now.
We have 4 lines we can roll and that allows a lot of our guys to remain fresh and for the most part, injury free and that should benefit us come playoff time. So for now I'm willing to give benefit to our coaching staff, not blindly, but because I do see some logic.