It seems like just yesterday you couldn’t open a newspaper in Toronto without some sort of crude, passive-aggressive headline featuring some kind of snide remark about William Nylander’s latest off-game. As recently as the 2020-21 season, there have been sports columnists comparing him to a piece of Ikea furniture without the instructions, and if you look hard enough online, you’ll find some trade proposals floated involving him being shipped out for somebody like Nick Ritchie.
Most of the outside noise has slowed down by now, only because Nylander turned the page of his first contract negotiation and has objectively improved every season, leaving his critics with nothing else to say outside of the odd cry for him to throw the body.
After Nylander posted 61 points in back-t0-back seasons to kick off his NHL career with the Maple Leafs, he was met with his first true butt of the head with the fanbase and local media — his first contract negotiation. Having burned a year off of his entry-level contract when he was called up to the NHL at the end of the 2015-16 season, Nylander completed his rookie deal without an extension. And when training camp rolled around in 2018-19 and he remained without a contract, the taste in the mouths of fans started to sour.
To be fair, how could you blame them? Nobody wants to see a young star on a team that’s spent the past decade struggling to ice a competitive roster sit out of game action because he wants more money. Especially for a fanbase as blue-collar as Toronto’s, full of die-hards who would lace up themselves and play for free if it meant seeing their favourite team have success, having Nylander sit out at the start of the season didn’t sit well with many. Kasperi Kapanen started taking reps on Auston Matthews’ right side, where Nylander had spent the last two years playing. After Kapanen’s hot start in the new role, the distaste for Nylander grew.
That is until December 1, 2018, mere minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline to sign restricted free agents. The extension was done. He was officially a Leaf for the next six years at the price of $6.9 million annually.
This deal happened at a time when teams weren’t yet comfortable giving elite young players who weren’t generational superstars long-term extensions in that price range. It was only 2018-19, but it feels long before the days of players like Cole Caufield and Josh Norris commanding salaries of upwards of $7 million a year after a few years in the league. So, naturally, discourse over whether or not he was overpaid began, and the noise only continued to ramp up when Nylander understandably struggled to start his season, having jumped onto a moving platform while everyone else was in midseason form.
He finished the 2018-19 season with 27 points in 54 games and had the heaviest of microscopes on him heading into 2019-20. The Maple Leafs were either going to look like geniuses, or they were going to look like a team that let the player win and paid for it. And, for a man who has been heavily scrutinized for his handling of the big three’s contract situations, then-general manager Kyle Dubas would end up looking like a genius for this one.
Nylander scored 31 goals and added 59 points in 68 games before the 2019-20 season was shut down due to the pandemic. He had 42 points in 51 games during the COVID-shortened season the following year. From there, it was a new milestone every year. In 2021-22, he came as close as he ever had to sniffing a point-per-game at that point, finishing with 81 points in 82 games. In 2022-23, he scored 40 goals for the first time and passed the point-per-game mark with 87 points. And last season, he took a leap even his fondest fans probably weren’t expecting — he scored 40 goals for the second-straight year and ramped up his playmaking with 58 assists, coming ever so close to the 100-point mark.
To add the cherry on top, in the middle of last season, Nylander did what none of the drafted core forwards had done to that point. He signed a maximum-length eight-year extension, earning himself a hefty albeit overdue raise of up to $11.5 million annually. And if there were any early worries that we were going to have another 2018-19 situation where Nylander struggles to live up to his new deal initially, he’s squashed them to start the 2024-25 season.
Nylander is second on the Maple Leafs in scoring behind only Mitch Marner and leads the team in goals with 14 and 24 points in 21 games. He along with Marner has also ramped up his game in the absence of Matthews with nine goals and 17 points in his past 12 games. He’s been used in stacked situations alongside John Tavares and Max Pacioretty, and he’s been used in a line-driving role to elevate the games of players like Max Domi, Pontus Holmberg, Matthew Knies, and Bobby McMann. And although you won’t find a jersey of his with a letter at any point, he’s developed into a leader for this team. He has 28 points in 29 playoff games for the Maple Leafs in the past five years and has routinely found himself in the clutch in those late-series games that, unfortunately for his team, have typically gone in favour of the opponent.
The advanced stats have favoured him so far, too. He’s got the third-best Corsi-for rating (CF%) on the team of all qualified Leafs forwards with 52.2%, and he also has eight goals at even strength, tying him for fourth in the NHL with Leon Draisitl and Jack Eichel. Unsurprisingly, he leads the Leafs in expected goals with a rating of 5.1, and he has the highest goals-above-expected on the team by a lot, sitting at 4.5 with the next-highest being Matthew Knies at 2.3.
Sure, it’s only been 21 games under this new deal. But at this point, the evidence and trajectory of Nylander’s career to date don’t point to any signs of regression. He’s always been vocal about wanting to remain a Maple Leaf for his whole career and seems to get better as the lights get brighter.
For a guy whose drive and consistency were questioned more than anyone in the early stages of his career, he’s taken every measure to turn himself into the exact opposite of what people have tried to frame him as, and from a personal standpoint, he’s done everything he can to prove the doubters wrong. Now, the team around him just has to follow suit.
