Toronto Maple Leafs: 4 Reasons Why There Is 0% Chance of a Nylander Trade

The Toronto Maple Leafs are not going to trade William Nylander.

Despite speculation from the contrary, the Toronto Maple Leafs will not be trading away one of their franchise players.  Why would they?

The history of the NHL is extremely unkind to teams who trade away star forwards under 24 years old.

Sure, Nylander had a disappointing season based on results.  The contract holdout was unfortunate, but it’s over now and he’s locked up for another five years.  No point going through that just to bail now.

Ultimately,  the underlying numbers are so good that no general manager in their right mind would trade him at his lowest possible value.  In fact, given the Leafs penchant for advanced stats, it would seem finding an unpopular player who has under-performed is their exact mandate.

They’d essentially be trading the player they’re looking for.  And, besides that, Nylander is a winger which is the Leafs weakest position.  Their defense takes the most heat, but they’ve got Calle Rosen, Andreas Borgman, Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin all in the minors.

Oh and Nylander can double as a centre when necessary.  Plus, he is arguably the best looking player in the NHL.  I don’t know that that really helps the team, but it sure can’t hurt!!

And that’s just for starters.

William Nylander

I don’t think Kyle Dubas is an idiot.

But only an idiot would trade a 22 year old forward with potential like Nylander after a season when his totals are low and his value is down significantly from where it should be.   So you can guarantee it won’t happen.

Nylander played 54 games had 7 goals and 27 points this season.  Those aren’t very good totals, but we know from past seasons that he usually scores significantly more.  And,  there are extenuating circumstances.(All stats for this article from naturalstattrick.com and 5v5 unless indicated).

First, his on-ice shooting percentage was only 7.69%  and that is low.

Second, his personal shooting percentage was 5% which is also really low, and just incredibly unlucky – in the 190 other games Nylander has played in the NHL, he’s shooting 10%, so we know for a fact this is just random bad luck.

Third, Nylander sat out until December and didn’t really start playing well until the middle of January and early February.  This kept his numbers down.

If you take all this together, then you what you have is a very good excuse for his low totals, as well as near certainty that they will go back up to expected levels.

Nylander Going Forward

We have seen that what we have in William Nylander is a player whose totals were suppressed by circumstance.  I guess the question to ask then, is what can we expect from him in the future?

Let’s look at a few things that might give us an idea.

Nylander lead the Toronto Maple Leafs in possession, with 56% of the shot-attempts when he is on the ice.

This makes him one of the single best play drivers in the NHL.  Whatever you think of Corsi is irrelevant – it is a 100% guarantee that a player who under-performs in the realm of goals and assists over a single season, but who drives 56% of the play, and has a history of scoring at a first line rate, will improve his totals int he future.

The fact is the underlying numbers are so good with Nylander that no one should care at all what his counting totals were this year.

Additionally, Nylanders differentials in all stats were positive: 56% of shot-attempts, 54% of shots, 57% of scoring chances and 55% of goals.  Despite the criticism he has taken (99% of which is completely ridiculous) the Toronto Maple Leafs won the portions of the game in which he was on the ice.

The Leafs were not only winning when Nylander was on the ice, but they were winning in all areas that lead to winning.

These percentages are a lot more repeatable than Nylander’s counting totals (i.e goals and assists).  It is an extremely good bet, based on these numbers, that his point totals this season were an anomaly.

Reason #3

Last season, Nylander had 45 5v5 points.  That ranked him 24th overall in the NHL, but that is a misleadingly low ranking due to how many ties there were.

45 5v5 points was the 11th highest total.  Taylor Hall, who won the Hart Trophy, had 46 5v5 points last year.

Additionally, Nylander played without Auston Matthews for 25% of his games,as he was injured.  Reasonably, that might be worth an extra five points, which would have put Nylander just outside the top five.

Just so we’re clear, last season Nylander, despite missing Matthews for a quarter of the games, finished just outside the top-ten in 5v5 scoring and ahead of such players as Phil Kessel, Vladimir Tarasenko, Evgeni Malkin, Jonathan Huberdeau, Sabastian Aho, Blake Wheeler, Braydon Point and John Tavares.

Given that he is about to turn 23, and has not yet reached his peak or his prime, you might not want to give up on a player who can do that.

If you put the expected power play totals of a first unit PP player onto Nylander’s 5v5 totals, you have a player that would have challenged for a top ten spot in league scoring at the age of 21.

At the very least, Nylander has the ability to challenge for scoring title one day.  Probably paired with Auston Matthews, with whom he has become one of the highest scoring combos, if not the absolute highest scoring, on a per minute basis, in the NHL.