WINNIPEG — The William Nylander wars have fallen silent.
A one-man armistice has been invoked by the polarizing Maple Leafs winger during a two-week period where he’s burned hotter than the hottest takes and wildly outperformed the AAV on that much-critiqued contract.
The battlegrounds have stretched far and wide. They’ve even popped up inside the Sportsnet studio, which is why the network’s official Twitter account slapped an “RT” on this tweet amid Thursday’s two-goal, one-assist performance by Nylander:
When you boil the arguments down to their core, they tend to revolve around whether Nylander is getting enough out of his undeniable ability. Whether he competes at a level that makes a discernible difference and warrants the team’s fourth-largest paycheque.
That is becoming increasingly difficult to debate when you consider that Nylander is now on pace for 37 goals and 74 points after his three-point night against the Winnipeg Jets.
He’s gone on a scoring bender along with many of the Leafs other top players since returning from a Western Canada road trip in mid-December, racking up eight goals and 15 points in eight games.
He’s feeling it. He’s helping drive the party bus with the tunes cranked.
“When Will gets his swag going he’s pretty hard to stop,” said teammate Travis Dermott.
The underlying stats have always been kind to a winger that is silky smooth with the puck and gains the offensive zone with ease. Even during last year’s miserable campaign, which started with a two-month contract dispute and never really turned happy, Nylander tilted the ice.
All that was missing were the boxcar numbers to go with it.
This summer he vowed to “dominate” in 2019-20 and at the outset of the second half he’s starting to make good on that word.
Nylander has caught fire in his first extended run alongside captain John Tavares, who has quickly come to appreciate the way they can create space for one another. The Swede possesses a wicked wrist shot — when it hits the net anyways, as Auston Matthews has repeatedly pointed out — but he’s equally as dangerous as setup man because his head is always up and scanning the ice while he skates.
Take, for example, the way he found Alex Kerfoot off the rush on Toronto’s third goal against Winnipeg, a play Dermott finished off after Kerfoot tipped Nylander’s gorgeous feed off the crossbar.
That provided a huge momentum swing just 78 seconds after the Jets pulled out of a 2-0 hole. The Leafs controlled the scoreboard the rest of the night while improving to 14-4-1 under head coach Sheldon Keefe.
“I think he’s very underrated with how strong he is on the puck,” Tavares said of Nylander. “You have a lot of trust when he has it.”
“He just hasn’t had any lulls in his game,” said Keefe. “I think that’s been the nicest thing to see. He’s been on it every shift and it’s not just the offensive pieces, it’s winning puck battles and coming up with loose pucks all over the ice and keeping himself
on offence and putting his linemates in good spots.”
No one is expecting No. 88 to be the offensive engine of a team that features three eight-figure players in Matthews, Tavares and Mitch Marner. But when he’s running like this he makes the Leafs awfully difficult to contain.
Consider Thursday’s highlights: He found a seam in a hard area to open the scoring after Winnipeg native Adam Brooks got him the puck. Then he assisted on Dermott’s go-ahead goal before adding insurance after Kerfoot and Tavares did some nice work to deliver it to him
on the doorstep.
“He’s finding open spots and the puck’s coming to him and he’s not missing,” said Marner. “That’s big for our team, it helps us a lot.”
It was a game where the Jets finished with a 48-28 edge in shots and yet Toronto enjoyed a 57 per cent expected goals advantage during Nylander’s minutes at 5-on-5.
He’s been an elite producer at even strength — tied for 20th in the entire league with 28 points there.
There were hints Nylander was in the zone as the Leafs went through a stretch routine on Thursday morning. He walked into the hallway at Bell MTS Place wearing gym shorts, a workout top and his beloved John Lennon glasses.
It was a big mood.
“He’s got a lot of different styles that he’s coming with,” said Dermott. “It’s all Willy styles that a lot of other guys can’t pull off, that’s for sure.”
Last year Nylander missed the visits to Winnipeg and St. Paul because of his contract stalemate and he just walked away from those games with five points and two Leafs victories. Kyle Dubas and his management team were actually holed up in a Minnesota hotel room
last Dec. 1 hammering out the final details of his $45-million, six-year contract and after the 4-1 New Year’s Eve victory over the Wild on Tuesday Nylander chided reporters for not bringing that up: “I thought there was going to be a question about it!”
What a difference a season makes.
“You’ve got a good flow and a good feeling,” said Nylander.
The flow and the feeling.
Not to mention an unprecedented amount of peace in our time.
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