William Nylander was doing his usual array of post-practice drills on Monday when Guy Boucher, one of the Maple Leafs assistant coaches, rushed over to embrace him with a big bear hug.
Nylander grinned, completed his precision puck-handling drill, and then reconnected with Boucher for a lengthy chat that looked to be of the soul-searching variety amid the coldest spell of Nylander’s season.
Nylander hasn’t scored since March 26, a season-long drought of nine games. His bid for a first 100-point season in the NHL has not coincidentally stalled: With only three assists during the goal drought, Nylander has landed on 97 points with only two games to play.
He was in a reflective, if still upbeat, mood when he finally came off the ice to chat about his recent struggles.
“Right now, the opportunities are there to be scoring,” he told The Athletic optimistically. “It’s just the puck was going in before and now it’s not. That happens sometimes. I mean, it happened last year to me. You just try to, I guess, maybe, simplify. I don’t know. But I think in these games I’ve had so many opportunities to score… it’s just not going in. So I don’t need to change much, I think.”
Then, he added somewhat uncertainly, “Maybe less thinking when I get the shot opportunities.”
I wondered if Nylander, ever so cool and confident, felt like he was hesitating now as the goals and points dried up after a first half that saw him scoring all the time and producing like few others in the league. “Yeah, maybe that,” he said. “But everything up until that point has been great. I think the best thing is not really to put too much energy into it.”
“It happens,” he said, referring to the recent struggles. “I think once it goes a couple games (without scoring) you maybe get a little bit, I don’t know if humbled is the right word, but you’re more like, ‘OK, just relax, it is what it is, it will go when it goes.’ Instead of being so up in it for two, three games where you’re just like…”
Nylander stopped to scrunch his face into one of frustration and let out a curse word. This, he meant to suggest, was how he’d been feeling. Annoyed. Frustrated. Emotions that have been unusually visible in recent games.
“It’s like, enough of being like this,” Nylander said.
Nylander said he reached that conclusion, that his mentality had to change, when he thought back to how last season ended. That is, with Nylander enduring a similar slump as he chased 40 goals and potentially, a contract extension with the Leafs that summer. He didn’t score No. 40 until game No. 82.
What looked to be a surefire season of well over 40 goals and 90 points ended up on 40 and 87, still the best marks of his career, but not what he was gearing toward. (Nylander admitted to me earlier this season that he was thinking about his extension amid those struggles.)
I wondered if the prospect of reaching 100 points for the first time in a season that saw him sign that extension for eight years and $92 million was factoring into his current slump.
“I think that’s probably played a little bit of a part in it, for sure,” Nylander said, noting the missed chances and disallowed goals which have plagued him recently. “And now, I’m like in the heat of the moment for those three, four games where it wasn’t going my way – but then you just look back at it now and you’re like, whatever, it is what it is.”
In other words, why feed the frustration? Just relax. The puck would eventually find its way back in and he might still reach 100 points after all and become only the fourth Leaf to do so. And of course, Nylander’s season will ultimately be defined by what happens in the postseason.
“Who knows,” Nylander said of 100 points. “It might happen these next two games.”
Regardless, this will still rank as the best season of Nylander’s career. He’s already matched or set career highs in goals (40), assists (57), and points (97).
“And if it happens it happens,” Nylander said. “If it doesn’t I have eight more years to try to do it.”
He laughed.
Nylander is still playing out the final year of his once-controversial six-year contract. Did the extension change anything for him in terms of approach? Maybe shift his mentality somehow?
It didn’t, Nylander said.
“You signed the contract, but you still want to – you’re obviously super happy to be here and you’re getting paid and the club and everybody appreciates what you’re doing. But regardless of what happens this year, next year I want that year to be better than what happened this year,” Nylander explained.
“Obviously there will be some years where it doesn’t go. But you always want to try to be better and better and better. That’s just how I feel.”
(Photo: Mark Blinch / NHLI via Getty Images)