Toronto Maple Leafs: Expect William Nylander to Be Great in the Playoffs

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a week away from playing the Columbus Blue Jackets.

The series will be a best of five, with the winner (the Toronto Maple Leafs) going on to face one of Boston, Tampa, Philadelphia or Washington.

One of the reasons the Leafs can be expected to beat the Blue Jackets is that their team is so stacked upfront, that William Nylander is somehow their fourth best forward when he’d be most team’s best or second best player.

One weird complaint I often see about Nylander is that he is bad in the playoffs.  This, like almost all complaints about Nylander, turns out to be completely wrong.

People used to say he was a soft player, and he responded by leading the NHL in net-front goals, something usually reserved for players that get called “power forwards.”

Nylander may not get check enough to earn that moniker, but he does drive the net and will go to the dirty areas to score – something which his accomplishment now makes indisputable.

William Nylander in the Playoffs

Nylander scored 31 goals and 59 points in 68 games this year.

The main reason he wasn’t a point-per-game player was that he had only 2 secondary assists on the power-play all season.

For a player with 15 power play points, playing on the NHL’s most dangerous power play, that is obviously just bad luck. (That secondary assists are mostly a luck-based stat is something the analytics community has been saying for a decade now). (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

Nylander should have had several more assists just for showing up, but his PP totals are lower than they’d be on almost every other team in the NHL due to the Leafs PP also featuring Matthews, Tavares and Marner.

Nylander finished tied for 26th in the NHL in 5v5 scoring, with half the players ahead of him playing more minutes.

People who criticize Nylander’s playoff performance tend to focus on the three goals in 20 games.  Admittedly, not great.

But, here is some context:

Only four Leafs have played in all 20 playoff games for the last three years (Marner, Matthews, Nylander and Hyman).

Marner leads with 17 points, Matthews has 13 and Nylander has 11.

Nylander’s  individual shooting percentage is also 6.25% which is very low and obviously unlucky because it is half of his career shooting percentage.

Nylander’s on-ice, regular season career shooting percentage is roughly 11% but only 8% in 20 playoff games.

So both Nylander and the people who skated with him have gone a little cold over his first 20 playoff games.   It doesn’t mean he can’t play in the playoffs though, because his other stats are very good.

Over three playoff season, including one where he had to play centre and skate with Marleau and Brown (both guys who scored at or below 4th line rates) Nylaner’s stats are shockingly good.

58% corsi-for

56% shots-for

53% goals-scored

53% expected-goals

56% scoring chances-for

59% dangerous chances.

Those aren’t just good numbers.  Those are superstar, franchise player numbers.

If a player puts up those numbers, but has a low individual and on-ice shooting percentage, both of which are demonstrably than his regular season percentages, then it is 100% obvious that that player got some bad puck-luck and should have scored more.

William Nylander has played 20 games in the NHL playoffs and has put up dominant stats.  In almost all cases where an known offensive player puts up high-end stats but doesn’t score as much as you’d expect, the scoring shows up eventually.

To put it in other words: William Nylander is due.

Look out Columbus.