Nylander on record $92M deal: Toronto is home

TORONTO — William Nylander never has been much for words.

And it didn’t take many for the Maple Leafs‘ winger to explain why he agreed to an eight-year, $92 million contract on Monday that will have him skipping free agency this summer to stick in Toronto for the bulk of his career.

“This has been home for me,” said Nylander, in typical simplistic fashion. “This is the longest I’ve ever spent in one place in my entire life. It’s funny, the other day I was talking to a friend, and I said, ‘and then we go home’ in referring to Toronto. Without even thinking about it, this was home.”

The Calgary-born, Sweden-raised Nylander can now start seriously planting some roots. The fresh contract extension kicks in next season to carry him through 2032 and comes replete with a full no-movement clause. It’s also the richest total value deal Toronto has ever offered a player, underscoring the treasured position Nylander has come to hold within the organization.

It was the Leafs who drafted Nylander eighth overall in 2014 and they’ve since shepherded the robustly talented forward through years of inconsistency to eventually have him develop into one of the NHL’s premier wingers.

That evolution earned Nylander a paycheck on par with the Leafs’ other vaunted core players — namely Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner — and those four skaters will now eat up over $40 million of Toronto’s cap space next year. It’s a major endowment from Leafs’ brass, and one Nylander claims he and his teammates appreciate.

“I think it’s huge as a player to feel that [management is] really investing in the core and betting on us,” he said. “And I think that we feel the same way. That’s ultimately why I wanted to stay here for eight years was I wanted to give it a run to try to win the [Stanley] Cup. Before I signed here [I said] how important that was to me. I know what our group is capable of. We have some stretches throughout the season that you guys might not think it, but I know what we’re able to do. I know myself and all the other guys in the core. We’ve all grown.”

No one more than Nylander himself. The 27-year-old has produced 198 goals and 484 points through 558 NHL games to date, and this season has been Nylander’s greatest opening act. He’s already produced a franchise-record 17-game point streak to start the year (complete with 12 goals and 27 points) and is currently fifth overall in NHL scoring with 21 goals and 54 points in 37 games.

It took years for Nylander to reach that elite pinnacle in his play. Leafs’ coach Sheldon Keefe knows the process he went through to get there better than anyone. He’s been with Nylander from the beginning, coaching him as a 19-year-old with the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies and at the NHL level since 2019. All along Keefe’s been pulling and pushing to get the best out of Nylander on a nightly basis. It was last year when Keefe started seeing the fruits of their combined efforts in helping Nylander ascend to his loftiest heights yet.

“He’s spoken a lot about being a top player in the league and being relied upon in all situations for our team and that’s been his ambition,” said Keefe. “He has done the work and I think he’s grown a tremendous amount. He’s on another level this season and to me the way that he takes care of his body on and off the ice and the internal motivation that he has and the drive to help our team win, we’re pretty excited to coach this version of Willie that he’s evolved into over the years.”

Whether this early success ultimately drove up the asking price for Nylander’s services long-term was a relatively moot point for Leafs’ general manager Brad Treliving when negotiating the new deal. Despite speculation that Nylander might have been less expensive to extend over the summer, Treliving said the bottom line was both sides had a goal in mind and were able to find common ground.

“When you have the starting point of a player that wants to be here, and a team that wants to keep him, usually you can get it done,” said Treliving. “Listen, it’s a big contract. It’s a lot of money. And so you go through that process, but I don’t if there was ever an ‘aha moment.’ You arm wrestle. You go through it. But I don’t think there was ever a time where we felt we weren’t going to get to the finish line.”

This is the second massive contract Treliving has finalized since replacing Kyle Dubas last spring as Toronto’s GM. He previously inked Matthews to a four-year, $53 million extension in August to keep him from reaching free agency in 2024, and now Treliving has Nylander locked in, too. Doling out big paydays to a few players — especially when Toronto hasn’t had the playoff success in recent years to back up that strategy — has naturally called into question how the Leafs will manage their limited cap space scenario from here.

Treliving’s stance seemed to be taking it one day — or one contract — at a time.

“Certainly, there’s always challenges, right?” he said. “And I think all we can do is tackle these things when they come up. I got here [as GM] and Auston was the priority. Auston and Willie were both going into their final years. We were able to get those done. And now you see what’s next on the list, right? You’re going to have a cap that increases, but we’re also not blind to the fact that there’s other areas of our team as we move forward that you have to improve. And we’ll continue to do that. But for right now, we got a really good player signed [today].”