In Craig Berube’s first meeting with the media on the opening day of training camp, he answered a question that lots of fans had been pondering in the weeks leading up to it – will William Nylander play centre?
The short answer: Yes.
Nylander at centre has long been an idea that’s been great in theory, but hasn’t really worked for the team for an extended period of time. The idea of taking one of your top offensive players and putting him on the second line opens up the opportunity of having John Tavares as your third-line centre, giving the Leafs a bit of a triple threat among their top nine. The other side of this issue is that Nylander has his flaws defensively, so putting him on a line in a position where he’ll have to pick up more of the load defensively instead of freely playing his game on the wing as he has in the past has potential to blow up in their faces.
The Leafs have used him at centre in the past, but it’s never lasted more than a couple of games at a time, mostly due to Sheldon Keefe’s hesitancy to move off of the Matthews-Marner pair on the top line and the Tavares-Nylander pair on the second line. Perhaps there’s something there to be unlocked under a new, defensive head coach in Craig Berube, but it will be interesting nonetheless to see if this experiment turns into something or remains just that, an experiment.
Meanwhile, Berube announced that the plan is to start Max Domi on the wing. He played centre at points last season but easily played his best hockey in the wake of Marner’s ankle sprain after getting promoted to the top line alongside Auston Matthews. Domi is arguably the Leafs’ second-best pure playmaker on the team after Marner, and putting him on the wing is probably the best-case scenario for both him and the rest of the team. He finished 17th in the NHL in 5v5 assists with 37, finishing with all but one assist at even strength. It will be interesting to see if Berube elects to spread the wealth on the power play a little more this season, as players like Domi and Matthew Knies are certainly worth more power play time than what they got last season.
The Leafs will kick off preseason on Sunday night against the Ottawa Senators.
