Craig Berube pens William Nylander as ‘The Breakaway Man’

Only a week after the Toronto Maple Leafs went on a three-game losing streak and the sky seemed to be falling, they won their next three games in a row and brought their fans back to earth.

One of the players facing some criticism during that three-game slide was William Nylander, who particularly rubbed some people the wrong way with a comment to the effect of “It’s only three games, what’s the big deal?” As much as this quote reads poorly on paper, the point he was trying to make was that you can’t take what happens over a three-game stretch as an indictment on the state of the team, rather than it doesn’t matter that they lost three games in a row. He said the exact same thing when asked what to make of the team’s current three-game winning streak, further proving his original point.

Nylander has four goals and five points in three games throughout the recent streak, and if it seems like Nylander is scoring all of his goals on breakaways, it’s actually not far off. Three of his four goals in those games have come on breakaways, including the game-winning goal last Thursday over the New Jersey Devils. His coach, Craig Berube, penned him with a new nickname while meeting with the media after Monday night’s win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

“Who? Oh, the breakaway man!” Berube said with a laugh as a reporter teed up a question about Nylander’s game. He followed it up by talking about his conversations with Nylander on a day-to-day basis and why Nylander is so effective at getting those 1-on-1 opportunities with opposing goalies.

“He reads the play really well. Slashes out well on those plays,” Berube said. “A lot of times, like that last time, he just wins a puck battle. His ability with his stick and his feet are high-end. Some of the things I see him do are pretty incredible.”

Nylander, on the other hand, didn’t offer much insight into what he sees on those breakaway opportunities. Maybe it’s a case of a magician not wanting to reveal his tricks, or maybe this is just a man of few words.

“I don’t know, I think it’s just instinct in the moment, I guess.” Nylander said.