William Nylander

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

81 games, 34 goals and 46 assists at 18:16 a night, minus-9, sixteen penalty minutes, 256 shots and seven game-winners. Thirteen of the thirty-four came on the power play. Eighth overall in 2014 by Toronto, seven seasons, 439 games, 343 points.

The Finesse Game

10.38 shots per 60 is the 92nd percentile among the 393 forwards who played forty games, at 13.3 per cent, from a 28-foot median at the 75th percentile with forty-five per cent from the slot at the 25th.

Thirty-four goals from 256 attempts, most of them from outside the paint — the third Toronto forward in a row with that shape.

Thirty-nine per cent of his points came on the power play, the 95th percentile, off 3:01 a night at the 86th. 2.43 even-strength points per 60 is the 80th percentile, which is good and is the lowest of the club’s top four.

55.1 per cent of the expected goals is the 84th percentile and 53.3 per cent of the attempts the 77th, out of 59.8 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 57th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts.

2.39 takeaways per 60 is the 92nd percentile against 1.34 giveaways at the 39th — the cleanest ratio in the top six.

The Physical Game

0.77 hits per 60 is the 14th-fewest of all 393 forwards at 6-0 and 200 pounds.

0.41 penalties drawn per 60 is the 11th percentile against 0.32 taken at the 12th. He is almost never involved in a collision in either direction, and sixteen penalty minutes came out of eighty-one games.

The Intangibles

23.0 mph is the 82nd percentile and his shot is 96.1 mph at the 89th — the hardest shot among Toronto’s forwards.

4.9 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 47th percentile and 9.42 miles per 60 the 31st. A high top end and an ordinary amount of it.

He is 26, with 343 points in 439 games across seven seasons, and eighty points is a career high by nineteen. Speed, the hardest shot on the club, a 92nd-percentile shot rate and the best takeaway-to-giveaway ratio in the top six. The hitting and the penalty ledger are where a club decides how much of the eighty points survives a seven-game series, and the record has nothing to say about that.