Leafs’ William Nylander buried at centre, but not forgotten

Auston Matthews scored two of Toronto’s seven goals as the Maple Leafs beat the New York Islanders 7-1.

William Nylander would be the most conspicuous rookie on, oh, 25, 26, maybe 27 NHL teams and yet somehow he gets third billing among the Toronto Maple Leafs’ freshmen most nights.

A lot of times he’d be farther down the list, this despite the fact that, barring injury, he’s going to cruise by 20 goals for the season and is capable of making a dazzling play or three on any given shift.

With a critical 7-1 win over the New York Islanders in Game 55 Tuesday night, this seems an appropriate time to examine to consider All Things William at this juncture of the season.


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Appropriate because coach Mike Babcock has gone on the record and declared from now to the summer the Leafs’ 2014 first-round pick will be working the wing and not centre, his natural position. This might be interpreted in some way a comment, if not a criticism, of his play to this point and people might read an organization’s disappointment into it.

Don’t.

Okay, before digging down on what he is in the grand scheme of things let’s look at how we got here.

When Nylander was drafted, his selection seemed to be a clear break from the organizational culture as laid down by Brian Burke, the end of the Truculence and Belligerence Era, the embrace of skill and the game as it’s actually played by millennials around the league.

In the season after his draft, when he worked on his game in Sweden, one prominent online draftnik stated categorically that Nylander was the third best professional not playing in the NHL, heady stuff.

And this brings us to the Leafs. Look, there’s only so much thunder to go around among Toronto rooks and Auston Matthews and Mitchell Marner have stolen the vast majority of it and taken turns being the story most nights. Last night was Matthews’ turn, named the first star for two third-period goals.

If you were going to weigh the impact or importance spread across the season to this point, Nikita Zaitsev might be right there with No. 34 and 16.

It’s scary to think what the Leafs’ thin blue line would look like without Zaitsev playing beside Morgan Rielly on the top pair—in a game against the Islanders, how many rookie defencemen around the league would be out on every shift versus John Tavares? With his extensive KHL experience and the fact that he turned 25 this season, you tend to think of Zaitsev as a rookie in name only.

Throw in Connor Brown and Zach Hyman who were riding shotgun on Matthews’ wing, as is often the case, and they have had prominent turns on occasion.

Last night, Nylander was as good as anybody on the home team new or old before the game turned into a rout. He picked up a second assist on a goal by Nazem Kadri late in the first period, a real backbreaker that gave the Leafs a 2-0 lead and would prove to be the winner.

Midway through the second period Nylander crashed the net, sneaking behind Islander defenceman Thomas Hickey to the edge of the crease. Kadri centred the puck and Nylander made one of the less skilled plays of his young career for his 15th goal of the season—he braked to a full stop and the puck banked off his leg and past starter Thomas Greiss. That made it 3-0 and the Leafs were safely home despite a phantom infraction that led to Jason Chimera’s penalty-shot goal.

Nylander suffered some criticism early in this season for defensive lapses and that cost him some ice. Matthews has consistently scored high marks for his play without the puck and has been improving on that count. And Marner has even been rewarded with shifts on the penalty kill, nothing that you’d have expected early in the season.

Yet Nylander seems to have found a home on the right wing beside Kadri. They along with Leo Komarov were Babcock’s first choice to skate against the Islanders’ top line of Anders Lee, Josh Bailey and Tavares, who were all minus-1 for the night. How suspect can Nylander’s defensive awareness be?

Nylander is caught up in a game of numbers and really that’s the main, if not the only reason, that he’s installed on the wing through the spring. He has to give way to Matthews, Kadri and Tyler Bozak, who was 10 of 12 in the faceoff circle against the Islanders, almost automatic with clean wins in the Leafs’ defensive zone. Nylander might see some time at centre if there are injuries down the middle in the next few weeks but let’s set aside the hypothetical and look at Nylander’s place in the long run: Is he a centre for the Leafs when this group of rookies and emerging players gets a couple of hundred games under its belt?

I asked a veteran pro scout to give me his read on the question of Nylander’s likeliest position down the line, centre or wing. His reading was emphatic. (I have cleaned up a couple of typos here from a text here.)

“He’ll be a good two-way playmaking centre. Real smart. Not much physicality/not great on cycle but can make plays through traffic. Lack of strength is an issue for low game [both zones]. [Ottawa’s Kyle] Turris had similar issues [still has at times] but turned out to be good No. 2 centre.”

You have to believe that Nylander has shown a fair bit more in his age-20 campaign than Turris did—that season the Phoenix Coyotes sent him down to San Antonio in the AHL for the full season and he scored 24 goals, which Nylander might surpass playing in the men’s league and out of his natural position this year. So if the Leafs have a better version of Turris, they could have one of the better No. 2 centres in the league. And if he’s that, there’s little doubt that he might be as good as a lot of first-line centres on other teams, even if he’s on the undercard of his own.

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