Toronto Maple Leafs: William Nylander Gets Promotion to 1st Unit

After John Tavares broke his finger Wednesday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs had a few decisions to make.

Whether it be the power play units or the lineup, the Toronto Maple Leafs knew it’s going to be different for a little while.

It’s no fun that Tavares is injured, but the changes to the lineup are quite interesting.

Starting with the lineup – there were a few changes and I didn’t think they’d look like this:

Auston Matthews is not centring a line with Mitch Marner on his wing.

It looks like head coach Mike Babcock has decided to leave the Matthews line intact and shift Marner to the Alexander Kerfoot line (the new 2nd line).

The most surprising move was Jason Spezza getting a promotion to 3rd line centre. The 36-year-old has been a healthy scratch for the past three games and his relationship with the coach has been foggy.

I’m curious as to why Babcock went with Spezza over Nick Shore and Frederik Gauthier, who have both been significantly better, and have seen more ice-time.

It’s an opportunity.

Since the start of the season, the veteran centre has played in three of the Toronto Maple Leafs eight games. This is definitely a move by Babcock to say “show me what you got.”

This is the time for Spezza to show Babcock, just that.

New look power play

With Tavares out, Babcock and assistant coach Paul McFarland had to decide who gets a promotion to the 1st unit.

Enter: William Nylander.

The play-making winger and (sometimes) centre will slot into the bumper position in front of the net. He will likely also fill the role as the zone-entry player.

The last couple seasons have saw Marner receive a drop-pass at centre-ice and enter the zone that way. But, in the past three seasons, Nylander has had 97% offensive-zone entries 5v5 per 60 minutes (Turtoro, 2019 Public.Tableau.com).

Which could be one of the reasons as to why he was promoted.

Though the same play is made on the 2nd power play unit, it may be time for McFarland to change the way they enter the zone.

It’s one problem they’ve had since the start of this season. If they can sort that out, we will likely see a power play that can do more damage.

It’ll be interesting to see how the 2nd power play unit shapes up, and whether or not they will see any ice-time. A number of teams in the NHL stack their 1st unit and try to keep them out for the whole two minutes.

Could that be what Babcock and McFarland are trying to do?

Either way, it’s encouraging that Nylander and Spezza finally get promotions. But, Babcock did say after practice Friday that nothing is set in stone and that this is for warmup.

With these promotions being well due, we could see them last for one game, or they could last until Tavares returns to the lineup.