The selection of William Nylander marked a new beginning for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Toronto Maple Leafs regime that selected Nylander was, at the time, notorious for favoring size over skill in the draft. For example, taking Tyler Biggs in 2011 over guys like Rickard Rakell and Nikita Kucherov. The Leafs simply weren’t’ good at drafting.
But 2014 was different. It was the first draft that saw Brendan Shanahan as president. So in a class where the Leafs were expected to take someone like Nick Ritchie at eighth overall based on their past record, Shanahan crushed those rumours and selected small, skilled forward William Nylander.
Following Nylander in 2014 were Mitch Marner in 2015, Auston Matthews in 2016, and Timothy Liljegren in 2017. Compare those four first round picks to the early ones between 2010-2013 and the former blows away the latter (Morgan Rielly in 2012 is the only one to write home about).
Needless to say, between the addition of head scout Mark Hunter and a management staff that understands the necessity of valuing skill over size, the Toronto Maple Leafs are much better when it comes to drafting.
Anyways, let’s get back on the topic of Nylander.
Nylander’s First Two Seasons
He had a very good rookie season with the Maple Leafs in 2016-17. Spending the majority of the season on Auston Matthews’ right wing, he put up 22 goals and 61 points in 81 games. The funniest part about this is that you put these totals on any other team and Nylander looks like a total superstar. But he wasn’t even the highest scoring rookie on that team. Marner matched Nylander’s 61 points while Matthews put up a cool 69 points through 82 games.
Fast forward to this past season, and Leaf fans are eagerly anticipating the outcome of these rookies’ sophomore campaigns. Matthews would unfortunately find himself injured for 20 out of 82 games, but still finished hot with 34 goals and 63 points in 62 games. Marner led the team in points with 69 points in 82 games, and Nylander once again finished with 61 points.
So, Matthews averages over a point per game, Marner leads the team in points, and Nylander stays the same. What does this mean?
I’m not going to sugarcoat my answer. It means nothing. Nylander is fine. Say it with me. Nylander. Is. Fine.
Everything is Okay
I’ve seen many fans overreacting to Nylander’s outcome and even a couple of articles questioning whether or not this is something to be worried about. It’s not, and I’ll tell you why.
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Even though Nylander finished with the same amount of points, there was a significant difference. In his rookie year, Nylander had only 31 5v5 points and rounded out the rest on the PP. This year, he improved to 45 5v5 points – a 50% improvement.
Because they are harder to score, 5v5 are way, way more important than power-play goals. If given power-play time, an NHL player will score. It doesn’t work that way with even strength production, which has proven to be far more repeatable than power-play scoring. The Leafs happened to strike gold with the JVR/Marner PP unit and as such Nylander was relegated to the second unit and his PP totals dropped. But in reality, he vastly improved his play in his second season, which is shown by the 5v5 point increase of 50%.
While he didn’t improve his point totals, he certainly didn’t regress in terms of his game and if anything, he will continue to grow his game next season and beyond.