Toronto Maple Leafs: Sebastian Aho Sets Market for William Nylander

The Carolina Hurricanes signed Sebastian Aho to an eight-year, $78 million extension this week, setting the market for Toronto Maple Leafs winger William Nylander.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should be very thankful that Aho signed a contract before the Leafs came to an agreement with Nylander.

Drafted 35th overall in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, Aho has turned into a fantastic two-way centre with the Hurricanes. He’s consistently been a 30-goal scorer and has performed very well during the playoffs, helping the Hurricanes advance to multiple Eastern Conference Finals.

For the past five years, the Hurricanes have continued to be one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference and Aho’s presence has been a big reason why. Now, for the next nine years, he’ll look to guide the franchise to their first Stanley Cup championship since 2006.

If you compare Nylander to Aho, they’re very similar, but the one big difference is that Aho is a centre, compared to Nylander, who plays wing.

However, their stats have been pretty similar throughout their career.

Toronto Maple Leafs Should Be Happy Aho Signed First

Let’s look at the two player’s career stats:

• William Nylander (stats: hockeydb.com):
  • 521 career games: 177 goals, 430 points
  • 50 playoff games: 17 goals, 40 points
• Sebastian Aho (stats: hockeydb.com):
  • 520 career games: 218 goals, 468 points
  • 63 playoff games: 23 goals, 58 points

Throughout their career, Aho and Nylander have played the same amount of games, yet Aho has 41 more goals and 38 more points. Over the course of seven years, that’s not a crazy amount of more goals or points, but it doesn’t help Nylander’s case based on Aho’s last deal.

In 2019, Aho signed a five-year deal at $8.46M AAV and then has now signed an eight-year extension at a not-much-higher cap-hit. Aho essentially went for a team-friendly deal and it could now affect the market dramatically.

If I’m Nylander’s camp, I can’t be happy with this if he wants to stay in Toronto. Aho is arguably a better or more valuable player to his team than Nylander, especially based off the position he plays and the fact they’re the same age with similar stats should suggest that he can’t make more than Aho.

As a result, if both sides want to come to an agreement, there’s no way Toronto is going to give him a number than starts with $10M. I never thought he deserved that much to begin with, but now, without almost all certainty, we can assume that he’s not signing for $10M.

Well at least, not with Toronto.

It’s going to be very interesting now to see what happens with the Nylander negotiations but Aho’s “team-friendly” deal may have just cost him a lot of money, which could be great for the Toronto Maple Leafs.