Toronto Maple Leafs star winger William Nylander still has a ways to go until he will hang up his skates for good, but he has recently explained what his potential plans are for when he does eventually retire from hockey.
In an interview with Swedish outlet SportExpressen, after winning the Guldpuken (Golden Puck in English), Sweden’s award for being the top hockey player from a Northern European country that year, Nylander revealed some of his post-retirement plans and where he will be living after his NHL career is done.
William Nylander vinner Guldpucken 2025 – avslöjar framtidsplanerna i exklusiv intervju: "Alltid vetat det"https://t.co/ebXvRkDN45
— SportExpressen (@SportExpressen) August 3, 2025
“Yes, 100 percent. This is home,” Nylander said when asked if Stockholm would be his long-term base after retirement, translated by Google Translate. “Toronto is home in the same way. I love being in both places.
“I’ve considered Toronto home for 10 years, that’s the longest I’ve lived in one place in my entire life. But here in Stockholm, you have all your family and all your friends, so I love coming back home and seeing them. And then of course I love Stockholm. A wonderful city and it’s just nice to be in Sweden.”
Nylander further mentions in the interview that Stockholm is the place where he wants to put his “roots” down, despite him now living longer in Toronto than he has in the Swedish capital city.
That is all hopefully a long time from now. The 29-year-old winger should still have several solid years of productive hockey ahead of him, and that’s not even mentioning that he still has seven years remaining on his contract with the Maple Leafs. While the contract helps, Nylander, more than anyone on this team, feels like the player that will be in Toronto for the rest of his career. Mitch Marner has already left, Morgan Rielly might be traded as soon as he lets the team move him, and Auston Matthews might be looking for winning a Stanley Cup south of the border, in his home country, eventually.
Nylander is so ingrained with this current era of the Leafs and will be hanging up his skates as one of the best players in team history. And while it might hurt that he’s not just hanging around the city to then go to every single alumni event, it makes perfect sense to go back overseas when he is retired.
Let’s just hope that a middle-aged Nylander will show up more than Mats Sundin is currently.