Toronto Maple Leafs: Why Nylander on the Wing Makes No Sense

The Toronto Maple Leafs are keeping Nylander on the Wing.

That’s according to Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock. But he said that in the press conference of the final game of the season. Saying anything else would have been tantamount to firing the Leafs longest serving member through the press. Mike Babcock is too classy for that.

But come on, this fiction that the Leafs are somehow better with Nylander on the wing makes no sense. I get that it’s easy to stick with the status quo, and that Bozak is a fan favorite. My man Andrew certainly thinks so. But let me lay it out to you logically and we’ll see if I can’t change your mind.

Reason #1: The Toronto Maple Leafs are deep at wing

You can only dress a maximum of eight wingers. Hyman, Nylander, Komarov, Brown, Marner, JVR, Marleau and Martin. That’s eight.

Now where do you dress Josh Leivo? Are you really going to put Marleau on the fourth line? What about Kapanen? He’s one of the only Leafs forwards with good shot-suppression metrics and he was flat-out great during the playoffs. Playing him on the fourth line, or not at all, isn’t an option.

By moving Nylander to centre, you solve much of this problem. The you-know-it’s-coming trade of JVR will solve the rest of it.

Reason #2: Nylander is Better than Bozak

When Nylander was given a 22 game tryout the year before last, he played centre. Here are his stats for those 22 games: 1.73 p/60 , 53.9 CF% and 30.16 Shots-Against / 60.

During the same season, Bozak scored at a slower points/60 rate, had a lower possession rating and allowed an extra shot and a half against, per sixty minutes of ice-time.

So as a rookie centre, playing on a last place team, Nylander was objectively better than Bozak. Given their respective ages, it is 100% reasonable to assume that since then, Nylander has improved while Bozak has declined.

There is a 100% guarantee that William Nylander is better than Tyler Bozak.

And if you want to talk face-offs, you might as well talk about plus/minus – these are discredited stats that have no correlation to winning.

More from Editor In Leaf

In the NHL, because face-offs are a zero sum game (there are only two outcomes) the percentage comparisons look worse than they are. Furthermore, no one wins enough (at the pro level) or loses enough (and continues to take faceoffs) to make a significant difference.

Yes there are times when winning a faceoff leads to a goal. But those are anomalies. In the big picture, faceoffs have such a low correlation to winning games that you should not factor face-off ability into player evaluations. Faceoffs are the only skill where Nylander is worse than Bozak and you’d have to renounce all math to think this is a reason to play Bozak.

Reason # 3: All the other reasons

You can’t make roster decisions because of injury potential. If someone gets injured, those are the breaks. Keeping Bozak for injury insurance is madness in a salary cap world.

Speaking of the salary cap, there’s a pretty good reason: Bozak makes almost $5 million. Get rid of him, and you lose nothing talent-wise, but you gain flexibility to improve the roster in other spots.

As for chemistry? It’s nice and all, but who isn’t going to have chemistry with Matthews? The Law of Diminishing Returns means you should never load your two best players onto the same line.

Both Matthews and Nylander make those around them better. If you put Hyman with Matthews, you turn a fourth liner into a competent first liner and so on and so forth. Both Nylander and Matthews can each make two decent wingers into good ones. That’s four players that improve, where as, if you pair them together you improve only one other winger.

There is a reason Crosby and Malkin play on different lines and the Leafs would be smart to follow suit.

Conclusion

Logically it’s a slam-dunk. Skill, salary cap, teammate effects and roster depth. Nylander is better than Bozak, Bozak is expendable and expensive. This is a faultless argument.

Next: Alternate View of Where Nylander Should Play

And it’s impossible for me to believe that Babcock, Lamoriello and Shanahan don’t see the same thing. Tyler Bozak is very likely going to get traded and the Leafs will move William Nylander to centre. Anything else is insanity.

I mean, why would you intentionally pass up having the best 1-2-3 centre combo in the NHL? Especially when Bozak is terrible defensively and that is the Toronto Maple Leafs main weakness? (They were the third worst team for allowing shots against last season). A team that has Dominic Moore and Tyler Bozak as half it’s centres is a playoff longshot. A team with Kadri as it’s third best centre is a lock to make it.

Do the math.

stats from stats.hockey.analysis.com

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