The Toronto Maple Leafs have several candidates to finally bring home one of the major individual NHL awards next year.
In recent Toronto Maple Leafs history, only Auston Matthews (Calder), Pat Burns (Jack Adams) and Doug Gilmour (Selke) have won NHL awards.
But the major awards – the big dogs – the Hart, Art Ross, Norris and Vezina have eluded Leafs players for years.
While a ridiculous 15 Pittsburgh Penguins have won the Art Ross Trophy for being the NHL’s leading scorer, no Leaf has won a scoring title since the trophies inception.
Art Ross
If a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs were to win a scoring title, odds are it would be John Tavares, Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner.
But I think there’s one other player who might do it. Someone who is incredibly underrated – William Nylander.
Now before you roll your eyes and start typing furious insults into your computer, hear me out.
Last year William Nylander was the Leafs leading possession driver. He is one of the best creators of scoring chances in the NHL.
In fact, despite a narrative (driven by low shooting percentages) that Nylander had a bad year last season when he returned from a contract dispute, he led the NHL in scoring chances created per minute.
If we look at NHL player who played a minimum 700 minutes, Nylander’s 38.35 scoring chances per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice time was best in the NHL. The year before, he was 6th in the NHL. (All stats from naturalstattrick.com).
During that same 2017-18 season, Nylander missed out on being a top-ten 5v5 scorer by one point. He had 45, and 46 would have put him in a tie for tenth.
If you can do that at 5v5, all you need to do it overall is get time on a first power-play unit.
Can Nylander do that? Maybe. It would make sense for the Leafs to have one PP unit that consisted of Tavares, Marner and Rielly, and a second that had Matthews, Nylander and Barrie.
Additionally, Nylander’s potential to be super-elite has been seen before. Remember the World Cup where he out played Nathan Mackinnon and was one of the best players in the tournament?
Or what about last season when he dominated at the World Championship and nearly took him his second World’s MVP Award?
It’s not inconceivable that Nylander – who, in everything except goals and assists, was one of the Leafs most effective players last season, who has shown he can outplay the game’s elite, and who creates offense with the best of them – can turn in an MVP performance in the NHL as well.
After all, he’ll be feeding the puck to the NHL’s best goal scorer, and opposing teams will have to choose between sending their best out against either of the Leafs top two lines, meaning that he might see easier matchups without the usual drop off in teammates that comes with that.
If the stars align, and I think they will, then William Nylander could win the NHL’s scoring title and bring the Leafs their first ever Art Ross.
It’s a little crazy, but then again, if he played for the Penguins, he’d probably already have two of the damned things.