William Nylander snubbed as Maple Leafs call out an unfair decision, fans erupt

William Nylander is the 32nd-best player in hockey. At least that's what NHL Network says about the Maple Leafs winger.

The network dropped its top 50 list heading into next season, and Nylander landed right in the middle of it. Not top 10. Not top 20. Thirty-second.

For context, the winger put up 30 goals and 49 assists for 79 points last season. That's a point-per-game pace across 65 games played.

Sixty-five, not eighty-two. Nylander missed 17 games out of Toronto's full schedule, and that gap matters when you're arguing where a guy belongs on a top 50 board.

His cap hit sits at $11,500,000, tied for the 10th-highest number in the entire NHL. That's max-contract money for a player who just got ranked outside the top 30.

Is that a fair number for a guy carrying elite-tier money? Depends who you ask, and Leafs Twitter clearly does not agree with each other.

The account that broke the ranking framed it directly, asking followers whether Willy should sit higher or if 32nd is a fair spot among the league's best.

Nylander's minus rating tells a different story than his point total

Here's the thing nobody in that top 50 debate is bringing up enough. Nylander finished the year at minus-14, and his last 10 games alone carried a minus-9 mark.

Compare that to his last five outings, where he put up 4 goals and 2 assists for 6 points and a minus-4 rating. Hot finish, ugly finish, both true at once. That's the whole Nylander paradox in one stretch.

He scored on the power play 7 times over the season with 15 power-play assists, which tells you Toronto leaned on him hard in special-teams minutes. A ranking snapshot rarely captures deployment like that.

Toronto finished the season at 32-36-14 for 78 points, a minus-46 goal differential, and a seven-game losing streak to close things out. Ranking your best forward 32nd overall gets a lot easier to defend when the team around him was bleeding goals every night.

The Maple Leafs also bring in Jim Hiller as head coach for next season, a fresh voice trying to fix whatever went sideways in that stretch run. Whether a new bench boss changes how Nylander gets used, or ranked, is the real question nobody can answer yet.