There is a penchant for Maple Leafs fans to have unrealistic expectations of players, management, coaches and the team's performance.
When I think back to coaches that came in as the Leafs “saviour”, Stanley cup winner Randy Carlyle comes to mind, and we all know how that played out. Mike Babcock was another guy who was supposed to bring “all the right stuff”. That didn’t end well, either.
From the management side of things, countless general managers have come and gone without taking the team to the promised land. Brian Burke, Lou Lamoriello, Dave Nonis and more recently Brad Treliving all come to mind. Most of them came to the Maple Leafs with impressive resumes, all of them left as failures on some level.
Think back over the years. How many times has a player signed with the team and immediately been weighed down with the "saviour" tag?
An injury-riddled and aging Eric Lindros comes to mind. So do Owen Nolan, Alexander Mogilny and, most recently, Sergei Bobrovsky. All great players at some point in their careers, and all of them carried unrealistic expectations from Leafs Nation when they joined the blue and white.
Bobrovsky also underlines the fan base's belief that a change of scenery, namely coming to Toronto, should suddenly elevate a player's abilities, even with plenty of stat lines from last season pointing in the other direction.
Yes, the Florida Panthers took a step back last season, and they had a number of key injuries, including Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov. At the end of the day, though, we were still talking about a 38-year-old netminder. Any expectation that Bobrovsky would revert to the goalie he was in 2017 was asinine.
Unfairly anointing injury-prone and/or aging players as Toronto's messiah is one thing. Asking players to be something they are not is another.
William Nylander can be who he is, warts and unreal talent
With William Nylander's lack of defensive effort being debated on the airwaves, you just have to laugh at what Leafs Nation is asking of the offensively gifted Swedish star.
Nylander's outright refusal to play a 200-foot game has been on display for a decade. Mike Babcock couldn't get him to change. Sheldon Keefe couldn't change him. Craig Berube had no luck either. And now current head coach Jim Hiller is being asked to change Willy? It's nonsensical to expect him to succeed.
And here's the kicker: Hiller was on Babcock's bench as an assistant from 2015 to 2019. He's already watched this movie. He knows all the lines and how the movie ends.
Asking Hiller to change Nylander would be like asking Chris Tanev to be a consistent offensive threat every night and the key driver on the power play from the back end. Simply put, that's not gonna happen!
Anyone who thinks Nylander can be molded into a defensively responsible player who supports the defense down low and carries the puck out of his own zone is downright delusional.
Could Hiller dial back Nylander's minutes? Sure. Might he choose to deploy him differently? Maybe. What he can't do is change a decade of habits. As the saying goes, Willy "is what he is": an offensive threat every time he steps onto the ice, with the ability to dictate pace and finish breakaways.
Last season, Nylander still put up 79 points in 65 games. In today's NHL, that makes him a valuable commodity if he's appreciated for what he brings to the table: a key piece of the Leafs offensive lineup.
The Leafs aren't paying Nylander $11.5 million a year to backcheck. They're paying him to score. If Maple Leafs fans can get their heads around that, they'll save their livers a whole lot of damage.
So, what's the message? Don't ask players to be something they are not. Dial down your expectations of Nylander's defensive play. Accept what he is and what he isn't, and you'll sleep a whole lot better at night.
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