Toronto Maple Leafs: William Nylander ready to dominate

Between a holdout and struggling on the ice, Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander didn’t have a good 2018-19 season. Now he’s ready to put last season behind him and bounce back.

Last season didn’t go well for Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander. Contract negotiations didn’t go well and he wound up signing just before the December deadline for restricted free agents. Once Nylander got back on the ice, his production slipped quite a bit.

His points per game slipped from 0.74 in 2017-18 to 0.50 in 2018-19. Nylander put up 27 points, including just seven goals, in 54 games. He also added three points in the postseason, but to be fair, he had to switch to center after Nazem Kadri‘s suspension, so his lack of production in the playoffs wasn’t surprising.

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Nylander’s already preparing for the 2019-20 season. He took time from his preparation to talk to Chris Johnston of Sportsnet.

“Last year’s just gone,” Nylander said, via Sportsnet. “Out of the books, really, except for maybe taking some stuff that I learned. I look forward to dominating.”

Though Nylander struggled to produce last season, a deeper dive into his numbers reveals some astonishing stats. They should encourage Maple Leafs fans, as they suggest he’ll be backing up his talk about “dominating” with actions.

One number that jumps out is 5.4% – his shooting percentage. That was by far the lowest of his career. Nylander has converted on over 10% of his shots on goal in each of his first three seasons. Expect his shooting percentage to experience some regression to the mean.

Another one is 12 expected goals during all situations. Nylander wound up with seven. Throughout his career, he’s been able to slightly outscore his expected goals. If I were a betting man (and I am not), I would bet he’s going to get back to his reliable goal-scoring ways.

After scoring 14 goals on the power play over the previous two seasons (2016-17 and 2017-18), Nylander had just one during the 2018-19 season. To be fair, the entire Maple Leafs power play struggled last season. Though they finished eighth by converting on 21.80% of their power plays, they struggled for long periods of time.

The Leafs hired Paul McFarland, the architect of the Florida Panthers power play which ranked second in the NHL last season, to run their power play. Expect Nylander to get his swagger back on the man advantage, which should help his numbers.

One thing Nylander did very well last season was improving his two-way game. The Leafs scored 55% of the five-on-five goals scored when he was on the ice, which was the sixth-best rate among all Leafs player who played at least 500 minutes.

Nylander’s team-high five-on-five expected goals for percentage of 54.11% shows just how good he was despite not being able to buy a goal. If he reunites with Auston Matthews on the top line, that should be good for both Nylander and Matthews.

Head coach Mike Babcock likely won’t have a long leash. This means Nylander and Matthews are likely going to be reunited. Last season, Nylander played with a number of linemates, but his most common one wasn’t Matthews. It was Kadri.

Nylander’s confidence seems to be back. He missed it for most of last season. But Nylander’s talk about dominating is more than just a bunch of words. Don’t be surprised if he winds up having the best season of his NHL career. Nylander is motivated and, unlike last season, his mind is clear and he’s ready to dominate.