William Nylander has found a new level.
We can all see it. It’s one of those things. You can just tell.
I’m not talking about the top-of-a-lineup player he has been for the bulk of his career. Not even the star who posted back-to-back 80-point seasons and is coming off a 40-goal campaign. This Nylander looks even a cut above that one. Night after night to start this season, Nylander has looked like the Toronto Maple Leafs’ best — and, frankly, most talented — player, with a point in all nine games (a new Leafs record to start a season) to show for it. It even feels like he has been better than his team-best 13 points in nine games (a 118-point pace).
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But how has he found that new level (beyond the obvious of it being a contract year)? What, if anything, has changed or improved in his game? Are there skills and tools that have progressed, or has he shifted his style or approach to produce better results? Have the outputs been better because the inputs are sustainable, or is this just a hot start that will regress to that 80-point mean?
To answer those questions, I watched back every shift Nylander has played through nine games and broke down the tape and the data to see if I could piece together if (and, if yes, how) Nylander has found his best version yet.
The conclusion: Yes, he has.
Here’s how.
The data
Before jumping into the tape, I think it’s important to look at the data for both strong signals or warning signs.
Unsurprisingly, there are pretty much only green flags. So much so that Nylander’s underlying numbers and rates don’t just look strong but have so far been stronger than Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in metrics they’ve owned with the Leafs for the last few seasons.
There are the basics, like his 19:58 average ice-time, a career-high which suggests Sheldon Keefe wants him out there more, and his primary point production (11 of his 13 points are primary so far), which indicates there’s good reason for that usage from his coach because he’s likely the one creating plays when he’s out there.
But a layer beyond that, his individual outputs have reached completely new heights, an even stronger sign that he’s playing the best hockey of his career.
At 5-on-5, his 1.94 goals per 60 minutes (G/60), 1.37 individual expected goals per 60 minutes (ixG/60), and 12.63 shots per 60 all lead the Leafs and rank in or around the top 10 in the NHL among regulars.
In all situations, here’s what some of those stats look like in relation to his back-to-back 80-point seasons, including his IPP (the percentage of Leafs goals while Nylander is on the ice that he has earned a point on), which again suggests he’s driving even more of the play creation out there than he has in past.
Season
| GP
| Goals/60
| Points/60
| Shots/60
| ixG/60
| IPP
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
21/22 | 81 | 1.38 | 3.24 | 10.38 | 1.11 | 66.12 |
22/23 | 82 | 1.58 | 3.43 | 11.56 | 1.36 | 67.44 |
23/24 | 9 | 2.00 | 4.34 | 13.02 | 1.44 | 72.22 |
His 26 shots and 40 individual shot attempts at 5-on-5 are also tops on the team, ahead of Matthews’ 24 and 38 even though he has played 123:31 at 5-on-5 to Matthews’ 130:34.
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He hasn’t ridden a lucky streak to get to some of his outputs, either. His on-ice 5-on-5 save percentage from his goalies is the third-lowest on the Leafs at .884 (only Ryan Reaves and Noah Gregor have received worse goaltending) and his PDO sits at 0.964.
There are also some positive trends in some of the more descriptive data.
Though certain things haven’t changed, including no noticeable uptick in hits (he has delivered just seven hits in nine games according to the league’s stats, tied for 11th on the team) and a consistent ability to draw penalties (he has drawn two and taken one), some things appear to be changing.
Without being physical in the hitting sense, he is still creating more than his fair share of takeaways. His seven credited takeaways are tied for second on the Leafs with Marner (who led the league in that department last year) behind only Matthews’ 12. Relevantly, he’s also turning the puck over when he has it much less than Matthews and Marner are, with impressively just one giveaway so far this season. The latter stat is a pretty clear indicator of good puck management/protection for a player who has it as much as he does (this is, after all, the guy who has “Give me the puck” as his Twitter/X bio).
According to the NHL EDGE player tracking data that is now publicly available, it’s not as though he’s skating faster or shooting harder than he has in the past to accomplish what he has, either.
He has skated slower on average (he’s down from the 89th percentile in bursts over 20 mph last year to the 78th percentile so far this season), less distance (down from 9.21 miles per 60 minutes to 9.10 miles), and shot the puck less hard (his average shot speed is down from 63.17 mph last year to 58.19 mph this year) so far this season versus last. Though I wonder if the former has something to do with adding a little weight this offseason (Nylander’s listed weight is up eight pounds from 196 to 204), it doesn’t seem to be hurting his game. On the contrary, his league percentile for shots, offensive zone time, and defensive zone time have all concurrently improved year-over-year, with his o-zone time rising from the 79th percentile (42.3 percent of his time on ice) at even-strength a year ago to the 95th so far this season (45.8 percent), and his defensive zone time rising from the 68th percentile (39.9 percent of his time on ice) to the 93rd (36.0 percent).
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His shot locations have also congested to the home plate area more than ever before.
According to data tracked by InStat, 274 of his 562 shot attempts last year (48.8 percent) were from the home plate area. This year, he’s up to 63.8 percent. Here’s what that looks like. Notice, too, that he’s hitting the net at a slightly higher clip from the two home plate areas as well.
The tape
In reviewing Nylander’s shifts, it was that last piece of the data, about where his shots were coming from, that was the most consistent theme.
More than any sudden change in his tools, little adjustments to Nylander’s approach, led by a clear and concerted effort to take pucks to the middle third of the ice, have made the difference.
Here, watch how quickly his first two touches bring the puck off the wall. The skill is dexterity to kick the puck up to his stick and then touch it into the space beyond the two Canadiens bodies. But it’s the immediate decision to go there instead of drift to the point or stop the puck and look for a standstill pass, that makes all the difference.
Same idea here. The reflexes take over to dodge the pressure atop the offensive zone, and the dexterity takes over when he briefly loses the puck in his feet and has to kick it off of his outside blade back to himself in a split-second moment, but where is he taking that puck? The guts of the slot and into coverage.
It’s unmistakable here, too. The skill? His ability to play past sticks and pull pucks around defenders. The approach? Using that skill to take a direct path to the net out of a stop-up in the corner, instead of traveling back below the goal line.
He has also clearly made a conscious effort to keep his feet moving off of the puck but slow down with it this season, using delays, hesitations and drags to beat pressure in tight spaces, and planning his movements out more deliberately in open ice. Anecdotally, I think that strategy has a lot to do with NHL EDGE’s average speed data on him as well.
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You can see that approach at work in open ice, where his conversion rates on entries have been high as he has picked apart coverage rather than speeding into it (or attempting to speed past it), and even in zone, where he’s simply allowing coverage to open up and then taking space to the middle once it does.
Watch him wait on the outside and then move into the middle here after the defender gets clipped:
And here’s that drag in man-to-man coverage that I talked about:
Now, with those last two videos in mind, watch how those two things come together and result in a goal (the slow pace into the zone, the surveying of coverage, and then the drag once he’s taken the space he wants and the pressure arrives):
The same approach has applied through the neutral zone, where he’s making that extra effort to try to enter through the middle wherever possible:
That has been particularly valuable on the Leafs power play, where Nylander’s ability to weave past coverage and into the zone at his own pace makes him the top unit’s most successful entry man — and led to a goal here:
Even on this odd-man rush in overtime, watch how he does two things:
1. Slows down to a glide when he gets the puck even though back-checkers are coming.
2. Waits that extra second before delivering his pass instead.
None of this is to say he’s playing slow as a default, or slow to avoid going at/into defenders, either.
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When there have been opportunities to use his speed and attack, or drive, he has taken them.
Here, I’ve stitched together three drives (two of which were on Miro Heiskanen, one of the better-skating D in the league, and the third of which led to a goal) to hammer that point home:
As I alluded to off the top, his pace has been quite high off the puck this season as well.
He’s keeping his feet moving and tracking pucks effectively. Here’s one example:
In the offensive zone, he’s also keeping a lot of plays alive (driving up that NHL EDGE zone time) by releasing quickly to loose pucks.
Plays like this, where he gets open in the middle of the ice, takes a shot, and then is first to the rebound, have been common in Nylander’s shifts this season:
Those releases work the same going the other way, too. Where the above clip he releases from the slot to the corner, here he releases from the corner to the middle:
Here, his keeping his feet moving off the puck to get to two rimmed pucks combines with the emphasis he has placed on taking pucks to the middle (or, in this case, passing pucks to the middle) to result in a goal.
Here, follow only Nylander and pay attention to his effort level off the puck (tracking back twice and forward into the zone once):
Above and beyond all of these things — his middle-focused approach, his slower pace with the puck, his active movement off of it, etc. — it’s also worth noting that the tape underscored what the data highlighted about his luck, as well. Not only have some saveable pucks gone in when he’s been out there, but he has also had, anecdotally, a bunch of very close opportunities to score even more than he has (drifting into the slot to rip one off the post against Montreal, a crossbar against Tampa, a missed empty net off the rush and point blank slot shot that he slammed his stick after against the Wild, linemates who haven’t connected on east-west plays he has teed up for them, and on and on).
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These things point to two early-season takeaways: That this version of Nylander might be closer to superstardom than stardom, and that this version of Nylander may be here to stay.
(Photo: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)
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