Toronto Maple Leafs: Biggest All-Star Snub of All-Time (But He’s Used to It)

The Toronto Maple Leafs are having a great season, and one of the main reason for that is William Nylander.

Nylander is the Toronto Maple Leafs best player to ever be snubbed from an all-star game.

Now don’t get me wrong –  I could not care less.

And I doubt Nylander does either – the vacation is probably preferable.  Especially with the event in Florida.

But, just on the basis of his performance, he should have been there, so let’s take a minute just to review how great he’s been. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander

It’s important first to mention that most of the people who do not like Kyle Dubas, and all of the people who troll this blog, along with the entirety of the Toronto Media, wanted to trade William Nylander.  

For a long time, for reasons even they probably don’t understand, Nylander was a sad and pathetic avatar of hate for people who are mad the game passed them by.  Now that he’s clearly one of the best players in the NHL (and arguably the holder of the best team-friendly contract in the league) I’m sure they would like to pretend the last four years didn’t happen.

And if he took that long to blossom, it would be understandable.  The crazy thing is that he’s been this good the whole time.

William Nylander struggled when he returned to the NHL after his hold out. The thing was, he was only struggling superficially – his advanced metrics were great, just the luck was against him and his counting numbers were low.  You can’t blame the less savvy for not getting this at first, but the last four years are inexcusable.

The Toronto Media (most of them anyway) owe Nylander an apology for brainwashing so much of this fanbase against one of the five or six best players to ever wear the uniform.

Nylander is on pace right now for 45 goals and 90+ points.

In the last three seasons, he’s 27 overall in 5v5 goals and points.  Overall, he’s 24th in points, 22nd in goals over the last three years.  Those are great numbers, but you have to realize that he’s a second line player, getting the third, sometimes fourth touch on the power-play.

On a team where Nylander was the guy, not one of the guys, he’d probably be a lot closer to the top ten.  In the last five years, the lowest he’s ever finished is with a 53% expected goals percentage, and he’s always one of the highest creators of scoring chances per minute.

One of the biggest snubs in all-star history, but worse than that, is the way the media and fans treated him for the last five years.

It’s hilarious, I’ll write a post and the same five guys are hear to scream about whatever they think I don’t understand, but on my worst day, I never did anything as egregious as fail to recognize one of the best players in Toronto Maple Leafs history.

And don’t get me wrong. It’s OK to be wrong.  But the Nylander Critics were so obnoxious, and they ignored the proof they were wrong for so, so long.  Ironically, most of the same people also hated Nazem Kadri, who went through basically the same thing.  I wonder if the Nylander critics will also pretend they liked him all along.

People always ask, Jim, what’s it like being infallible?  I could tell you, but you wouldn’t agree I was right for five years.