William Nylander had only one condition for new Toronto Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube when it came to the prospect of moving to centre for the second fall in a row: He needed time.
This couldn’t be another blink-and-it’s-over experiment. Not like last fall when then-Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe gave it exactly two preseason games before he ditched the idea entirely and pivoted to Fraser Minten, a then 19-year-old who had never played in the NHL.
Keefe made it about Minten — “It’s not a reflection of Willy at all,” he said at the time — but he obviously wasn’t buying into GM Brad Treliving’s belief that Nylander could play centre, and play it well, in the NHL.
How long will Berube give it this time around? “That’s a good question,” Berube said. “You’ve got to give him some opportunity and time.”
It’s a big and kind of unusual jump.
Nylander has played just over 600 regular season games in the NHL, plus another 54 in the playoffs. All but a handful or so have come on the wing. Nylander hasn’t played centre regularly, in other words, since before he became a Leaf, since he was a teenager essentially.
It’s not unusual for centres to slide over to the wing at some point in their career. But forever wingers moving to the middle? You don’t often see it, especially for someone like Nylander, now 28, and well established as one of the game’s very best on, well, the wing.
It would be a huge boon to the Leafs in both the short and long term if it works.
Day 1 lines for the Leafs:
Knies — Matthews — Marner
Domi — Nylander — Järnkrok
Robertson — Tavares — McMann
Lorentz — Kämpf — Reaves
Pacioretty — Holmberg — Grebenkin
Cowan — Quillan — Alex Nylander— Jonas Siegel (@jonassiegel) September 19, 2024
First, the now and potential benefit to John Tavares, turning 34 on Friday and about to enter his 16th NHL season. If Nylander can indeed hang as the No. 2 centre, the Leafs can lighten not only the number of minutes that Tavares plays in the regular season — he’s averaged in and around 18 per game the last three seasons — but also the quality of competition he faces in those minutes.
With lines led by Nylander and Auston Matthews drawing the opposition’s toughest defenders up front and on defence night to night, Tavares-led groups will have more opportunity to prey on lighter fare — third and fourth lines, third defence pairs on the regular. That’s not an experience he’s really had consistently in his NHL career, including in his six seasons as a Leaf.
It could be especially beneficial to the former Leafs captain in the playoffs.
Last spring, Tavares’ unit was tasked with playing up against David Pastrnak’s crew in the first round. And while they managed to slow Pastrnak’s line down defensively, they failed to generate anything at the other end, one of many factors that helped cost the Leafs that seven-game series.
A less taxing regular season, mind you, might just mean a fresher Tavares next spring.
A 1-2-3 of Matthews, Nylander and Tavares down the middle also brings with it the potential for greater offensive depth. The Leafs have been reliant, overly so at times, on two lines to generate offence over the years, another point of detriment in past postseasons.
For that depth to materialize, Nylander will need to show he can power his own line without help from either Matthews or Tavares, his collaborators at centre over the years. It feels like something he can absolutely do, what with his elite abilities as both a passer and shooter. And it was Nylander who really orchestrated things on lines with Tavares, in particular, in recent years.
Nylander seemed excited by the optionality that playing centre might provide him offensively, the prospect of him flying through the middle with the rock on his tape. “Getting some space with the puck, the option to go right or left versus being on the wing you’ve only got one option to go,” Nylander said. “It gives you a little bit more space and options.”
Can Tavares still be a goal-scoring force without Nylander (or Marner) teeing him up for opportunities? Tavares has almost always had one of the two star wingers by his side as a Leaf, so that’s harder to say. Once upon a time though, albeit as a New York Islander, Tavares thrived with grinders on his wing. He’s at a different stage of his career now, though with less challenging competition and a shot that still produced 29 goals last season, there’s reason to think he should still score a fair bit as the 3C — even if he has only wingers like Bobby McMann and Nick Robertson by his side.
Berube will still have the option of loading up if and when his team needs a goal, of moving Tavares up to Nylander’s wing, say, if the situation calls for it.
The Leafs could even give Marner a look on the right wing of a line centered by Nylander and let Matthews cook with non-stars by his side. (Our friend Dom at The Athletic has been dying to see the Leafs give this a try.)
If it works, the Leafs will have secured two of the more crucial positions on the roster for the foreseeable future, replacing the long-formidable 1-2 punch of Matthews and Tavares (a UFA, potentially next summer) with Matthews and Nylander.
Nylander, now earning $11.5 million on the cap, is more valuable to the Leafs playing centre, a more essential, demanding position than wing.
But of course, the question remains: Can he do it? And what do the Leafs do if he can’t?
Berube said he would be primarily concerned, unsurprisingly, by how Nylander acquits himself defensively.
“I don’t think it’s gonna be an issue with him getting the puck and transporting it up the ice. He’s an elite player, he has that ability,” said Berube. “But it’s the details of the defensive part of the game, the breakouts, and things like that, positioning, that takes a little bit more time.”
That’s really going to be the question: Can Nylander find the requisite focus and intensity night after night, shift after shift, to handle the job?
Nylander appears determined to do just that. He even sought details from Berube — on his system, and the responsibilities of the centre in it — well before camp so he would be better prepared to make the transition.
Another something he’ll have to improve upon if he’s going to keep the job is faceoffs. Nylander won just 47 percent of his draws last season.
Keefe, clearly, didn’t think Nylander could handle the gig. It wasn’t long after Nylander’s line spent most of an early October exhibition game against Montreal in its own zone that he pulled the plug on the whole thing.
It was Nylander’s second game at centre in the preseason. He was still adjusting. He didn’t get time to figure it out.
The Leafs should give Nylander not just the entirety of the preseason at centre, which might only amount to 3-4 games for Nylander, but a good 10-15 games in the regular season as well. If it’s not working at that point, for whatever reason, they can always slide Domi back to the middle as a Band-Aid solution and then pursue an upgrade ahead of the trade deadline.
The will appears there to make it work this time though, for real.
(Photo: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
