Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe has taken a tough-love approach to William Nylander before. But it seemed like the star forward was past the whip cracking for a while.
That didn't turn out to be the case when the head coach benched Nylander for the remainder of the first period after Alexis Lafreniere scored the opening goal on Saturday for the New York Rangers.
On the play, Nylander exited the zone while trying to stop an opportunity from Rangers defenseman Adam Fox, leading to Lafreniere's tally.
In the weeks and days leading up to the game, Keefe stressed that the newly-constructed second line of Nylander, Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi hasn't been as solid defensively as he would have liked. Although the trio have been scoring goals, the underlying numbers have shown that they have given up more chances than they are receiving, resulting in the coach being concerned about where things were going.
Keefe met with them the day before the club's 4-3 shootout win against the Rangers, which set the coach off when Nylander made his error on Saturday.
"I probably wouldn’t have been as sensitive to it the other day if wasn’t for the fact that we had the meeting just the day before," Keefe explained. "Each mistake is different. Some are well-intentioned and the play doesn’t execute the way you want it to and something goes wrong in some cases it’s purposely stepping outside of the structure of the system and that’s to me what it was the other night."
Nylander redeemed himself with a goal later in the game and his offensive contributions are undeniable, but the Leafs don't want it to come by cheating his defensive responsibilities.
The line of Bertuzzi-Domi-Nylander has played 85:15 together at 5-on-5 and has an expected goals percentage of 36 percent, according to NaturalStatTrick.com. All of this even though they have been on the ice for seven goals for and six goals against.
"In general, there’s less tolerance from my end such as that one on William," Keefe said of Nylander. "Whether it’s him or anyone else. But I said a little more sensitive to it given I met specifically with that line about those types of things."
The trio will stay together to start when the Leafs host the Boston Bruins on Monday. But if the line doesn't improve you wonder if Keefe looks to pull the trigger and make a change.
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