Toronto Maple Leafs: Putting William Nylander’s 61 Points In Context

The Toronto Maple Leafs signed William Nylander to a new contract last week, and he makes his 2018 debut tonight against the Red Wings.

Though the Toronto Maple Leafs got a very good, team-friendly cap-hit after the negotiations were finished, they still faced criticism from some corners of the hockey world.  These people believed the cap hit was too much for just a sixty point winger.

But William Nylander is so much more than that.

He’s a point per game player capable of winning a scoring title.  His early career stats compare favorably to Taylor Hall. He performed excellently in last year’s playoffs, despite some people saying differently (those people apparently only look at point totals because otherwise they’d know that to play above 50% possession while facing the league’s best line, and still scoring three points in seven games, despite Matthews scoring only once on 30+ shots is actually impressive).

Putting William Nylander in Context

Throughout the entire process of Nylander’s holdout, what struck me was that fans universally side with the team.  I saw people call him “Melander,” which is just an embarrassingly bad pun, and others called him soft, which is just an embarrassingly bad analysis of his game.

Turning on a player because he wants to get paid what he’s worth is, sadly, just part of the game of hockey.  People forget that Brendan Shanahan, and a guy asking everyone to please be nice and take a discount, as well as the architect of the current Toronto Maple Leafs, had two separate contract disputes.

However, I think one of the biggest reasons fans turned on Nylander so savagely was the failure of the mainstream hockey media to put his stats in context.  “He’s just a sixty point winger,” was the consensus from guys like Brian Burke, Jeff O’Neil and many others.

But by the proper context, those sixty points are of a super-star level.

Last year, Nylander had 45 5v5 points.  Now, 5v5 points are important because they are far more repeatable than power-play points.  Scoring power-play points has more to do with opportunity to be on the power play, and the system the coach employs than individual talent.  Also, the game is played mostly at 5v5, and while almost any NHL player can be effective on the power play, it is much harder to be consistently effective 5v5.

As I said, Nylander had 45 5v5 points, and that ranks him 24th in the league, but it’s the 11th highest total. Only eight players exceeded 49 5v5 points.  Nylander also played without Auston Matthews for over 25% of the season.  And, almost all the players who scored more than him played one to two minutes more per night.

It’s not unreasonable to think that if Matthews didn’t get injured, Nylander would have been a top five 5v5 point producer.

Anze Kopitar scored less points per minute than Nylander, and Kopitar had 90 points.

Here is a list of players who scored less per minute than Nylander: Kopitar, Aho, Kuzenetsov, Barkov, Point, Scheifele, Kane, Tarasenko, Rantanen, Wheeler, Eichel, Tavares, and Crosby.

100% of those players either currently or will soon make more than $7 million annually.

Further Context

The Leafs had a pretty amazing power-play last year, and through no fault of their own, Nylander and Matthews were on the second unit.  This really cuts into their time, and had Nylander been given the amount of power play time that players of his skill level usually get,  he’d have almost certainly been a point-per-game player.

Nylander “only” scored 61 points last year, but he scored at a rate that was better than many of the players routinely considered better than him, and he played over two minutes less per game than they did.  Nylander skated 16:41 per game, on average (all situations) while the league leaders among forwards were at 22:00.

Put in the proper context, Nylander’s 61 points were elite production.  He makes only $7 million per year, which is Dion Phaneuf money.  Money the Toronto Maple Leafs paid Phaneuf when he was older, and less important to the team, and when the cap was lower.

The Toronto Maple Leafs got a bargain when they signed Nylander for the price they paid, and we will finally get to see him in action tonight.

Stats from Natural Stat Trick.