Toronto Maple Leafs: Expect Career Year For William Nylander

It may only be one pre-season game, but William Nylander looks ready to take it to a new level with the Toronto Maple Leafs this season.

Routinely seen as a scapegoat for some of the Toronto Maple Leafs worst fans, William Nylander hasn’t yet had a break-out year in the same way as his peers Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.

Granted, those two are two of the greatest players in Leafs history, and very few players reach that level. But Nylander has long been denied the kind of opportunities a player like him would normally get because it’s extremely rare for a player like Nylander to not be one of his team’s best players.

Nylander has resided in a relatively comfortable spot on the second line, with his center John Tavares certainly no slouch, but his point totals have been suppressed by being on such a star studded team and he clearly has more to give.

Toronto Maple Leafs 4th Best Player Ready to Shine

William Nylander has been able to accomplish a lot for a player who still occasionally makes bone-headed decisions or fails to maintain a full effort at all times.  Or maybe we are just really bad at judging effort.  Who knows?

Indeed, last season was his best year yet in pure points with 80 points, but you get the vibe that there is still more to come and the Toronto Maple Leafs might be about to see that.

Watching the way he played at the World Championships for his native Sweden, Nylander is starting to show a little more willingness to make the odd physical play; a responsibility he’s often found himself derided for shirking.

He seemed busy in the pre-season opener and always involved in the offensive-zone action, in turn allowing his line-mates Pontus Holmberg and Denis Malgin a real chance to shine and stake their claims at the Maple Leafs roster.

Last year, it was typically Alex Kerfoot on the other wing and while that worked out, with a career year of 51 points; the second-line might still need something a bit different.

Watching the way Calle Jarnkrok played in the other split-squad fixture, he may have cemented an early claim for the second-line left-wing and would certainly offer something of a slightly more hard-working, defensively stabilising presence.

That in turn might open up a bit more space in terms of William Nylander and his obvious playmaking ability. To suggest that he could hit 90 points at this point of his career doesn’t feel like a complete stretch of the imagination.

However, the key to achieving that is that the Toronto Maple Leafs give him both ample opportunity and runway to do so, but also that they keep on top of him to ensure there are no huge swings in his performance.

If Nylander can finally start producing with consistency, the sky really might be the limit this season; certainly, he can help take a little burden off the first-line.

With all this said, it’s easy to get excited off the back of one pre-season fixture and there’s still a few to go before the regular season, but early indications suggest Nylander is ready to go.