After Thursday night’s game two loss, many fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and media pundits had their fair share of criticisms of forward William Nylander’s play. As per usual, when a team goes down 2-0 in a playoff series, there will always be players being used as scapegoats, fairly or unfairly.
The Leafs’ winger has been a lightning rod for the majority of his career. Even with it being sometimes justified, in the case of this series so far, it’s not.
Is William Nylander to blame?
To get this out of the way, there are shifts or specific plays that are criticizable for Nylander. Like most players, if you zoom in on a few seconds during his nearly 20 minutes of TOI a night, you will find gaffes or moments of poor effort — it happens.
William Nylander will eventually snap out of this funk
However, looking at the series as a whole so far Nylander has been a consistent offensive threat. In game one, Nylander registered four shots on goal at 5v5, the most on the Leafs. He took four again in game two but this time, Auston Matthews lead the team. The volume of shots doesn’t say much but what also helps is the quality of shots Nylander is taking.
According to moneypuck.com, in both games, Nylander has led all Leafs’ players in expected goals at 5v5. In game one he ended the night after playing 13:54 at 5v5 with 0.776 xG and in game two he played 15:04 with 0.634 xG. To add further context, no player on the Florida Panthers has even cracked 0.6 xG in either game yet.
Zooming out, one area where Nylander and his linemates could improve at 5v5, is defensively, specifically in game two. Despite generating high individual xG, he sat amongst the worst Leafs in xG% with 38.9%. Meaning that the Leafs were horribly out-chanced when Nylander’s line was out on the ice. In saying this, he also leads the Leafs in xG% in game one with 76.6%. So, one game where he was majorly out-chanced and one game where he majorly out-chanced the opposition.
All-in-all, given his individual xG generation and the back-and-forth xG% numbers, I would say it is hard to pin either loss on Nylander. Especially when weighing his individual play, he should try to keep up his scoring chance creation.
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Unfortunately, his offensive play has yet to result in success on the scoresheet. The resurgence of prime Sergei Bobrovsky has held Nylander pointless through two games. But, if he keeps this play up, there is no doubt he should eventually snap out of this slump. If he can, it could make the difference in coming back from a 2-0 series deficit.