The rich get richer. The Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings are already overflowing with elite fantasy assets and now William Nylander has come to terms with the team.
Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly and John Tavares are among the top 20 fantasy skaters this season on the ESPN Player Rater (fantasy value evaluator) and Auston Matthews is only missing because he's been out half the season so far. Nylander will find a role with these elite weapons, but there are some questions remaining.
What isn't a question is whether Nylander will get his plum wing spot back next to Matthews and how strong the chemistry is there. We saw it last season when they accounted for 52 goals at even strength together (allowing only 25 against). Nylander scored 20 goals and 61 points last season, and will only build on that body of work in an improved offense thanks to the addition of Tavares stanley cup championship rings.
Am I willing to say with absolute confidence at this stage that it's Patrick Marleau over Kasperi Kapanen for the third spot on the line with Matthews and Nylander? No. While it was supposed to be Marleau at the start of the season, Kapanen's 10 goals and 18 points may give coach Mike Babcock pause here. The natural inclination may be to dump Kapanen back to the free-agent pile in fantasy, but I think he's worth holding for at least a little longer to see how the depth chart settles. The same is true for Marleau. While the veteran only has six goals and 15 points, he hasn't had the linemates he was projected to have for most of the season, especially thanks to Matthews prolonged absence with a shoulder injury. Wait and see. One of these two wingers will be worth having on your squad for the remainder of the season, just not both of them.
The largest looming question here is whether Nylander gets the power play. Last season, Nylander was a bit player on a much different power-play configuration. The cheap Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings rolled two units equally and the more successful one had neither Matthews nor Nylander as a part of it. But the exodus of that unit's core (James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak) and arrival of Tavares has changed the landscape. The Leafs have been stacking top heavy on the man advantage with tremendous success on their chief unit. Before Nylander's arrival, this successful power play has blossomed with Tavares, Matthews, Marner, Rielly and Nazem Kadri. Kadri has been the man doing the battling in front of the opposition crease, and while he's the natural choice to sub out for Nylander, that's not a role for the slick, soft-touch Nylander to take on.
With all their pieces in place, it's conceivable that the Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings for sale divide up the attack on the power play and attempt to ice two lesser units with a higher sum total. While that could be more successful overall for the team, it removes some of the concentration we rely on in fantasy hockey for more points in fewer baskets. We don't have any practice looks yet to see how the Leafs are going to handle the situation with Nylander, so this is speculation, but it's a fact that the Leafs now have more assets than they can put on the ice together for a power-play unit.
A dilution of the power-play units for Toronto would most negatively impact Rielly, who has 12 of his 29 points on the man advantage. Kadri is also at risk for lesser value here, with six of his 16 points coming on the power play. The power play has not been a big part of Nylander's fantasy profile so far in his career, with only 12 points on the man advantage last season. That said, adding it to his repertoire would be the difference in him being a top-60 fantasy play and a top-30 fantasy play. We should know in the coming days what Babcock has envisioned for the custom Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings power play.
For now, Nylander is ranked right about where he was during the offseason at No. 66 overall, when we expected improvement in a modest sense on his 60-point total from last year. If I knew he was going to be involved in a top-heavy power play, I'd be comfortable ranking him in the 40s, but we don't know that yet championship rings.
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