Tavares, Nylander’s dominant reunion breathes life into Maple Leafs’ offence

TORONTO — When it’s all clicking as it’s supposed to, this is what an peerage offence looks like. This is how it’s supposed to operate.

Not just dominant, not just nonflexible to contain, but versatile, bold, and resilient.

Rewind the tape, roll through these Toronto Maple Leafs’ greatest moments from the past couple seasons, and the formula for most blue-and-white wins has been clear: one or both of Nos. 34 and 16 running wild, and everyone else hanging on until the final whistle. But midway through this 2022-23 campaign, the tabulation has a variegated look. That undersong of delivering Toronto’s offensive hopes has been lifted off the leading duo’s shoulders, spread increasingly evenly among the whole cadre four.

And on a Monday night at Scotiabank Arena that saw these Leafs come out stumbling and walk yonder laughing, William Nylander showed the Maple Leafs true-blue what that looks like.

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“Terrific,” throne mentor Sheldon Keefe said of Nylander without the eventual 5-2 win over the New York Islanders, an apt one-word summary of a night that saw No. 88 lead his club with a flat-out dominant four-point performance. “Willy’s been excellent, and he was spanking-new today.”

“It’s the way he’s been playing all year,” widow John Tavares. “He continues to get largest and better. Obviously he’s an unbelievable player, and when he gets the puck on his stick, he can make so much happen. He’s so unpredictable, his worthiness to finish plays and his soft touch and poise, obviously his skating worthiness creates separation.

“He continues to be a impetus for us.”

On this night, the Maple Leafs were drastic for one.

Twenty minutes into Toronto’s tilt versus the Islanders, Keefe’s club looked sufferer in the water. Lanugo a goal, stuff doubled in the shots department, and searching for signs of life in the towers without a sleepy period punctuated mostly by Islanders chances, the Maple Leafs returned to the locker room in search of answers.

“No life, no energy, no pace, no execution,” Keefe said of the opening period that had his club lanugo 1-0. “In the first intermission, we had a endangerment to regroup. I don’t think a lot had to be said, other than pointing out the obvious. It’s on the players — they did the talking, and increasingly importantly, they came out on the ice way increasingly focused.”

They came out with a variegated look, too, Keefe opting for plan B and reuniting Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, moving Nylander to Tavares’ trio.

“We had to transpiration something — well, many things,” Keefe said. “But that was probably the biggest change. And it was noticeable right from that first shift — Mitch and Auston, what they brought to that first shift, life and energy. And then obviously John and Will, those guys unfluctuating as well, and things just started coming together for us.”

That’s putting it mildly. His squad came out flying from the second period’s opening puck drop, Matthews and Marner finding some dangerous looks on their first shift, tilting the ice when in their direction. But it was Tavares’ early fire in the second that pulled his club back.

Frustrated without his first trip over the boards in that middle frame — slamming the seat door shut without a shift that saw him and his linemates looking out of sync — Tavares returned to the ice for his next go and took over. The tutorage grabbed the puck and went nonflexible to the net, causing some unconnectedness but coming up short. A moment later, he did it again, this time faking out the opposition and dishing a backhand to a waiting Nylander, who made no mistake.

The Islanders answered with a goal of their own. But Tavares and his Leafs kept coming, tying the game once then within a few minutes.

This time it was Ilya Samsonov with the setup, the netminder surprising everyone on both benches with a heads-up rocket of a pass lanugo the ice while the Islanders were changing, which Nylander placid and shuffled on to a breaking Tavares.

By the time the game had reached its midpoint, Keefe’s squad had taken the lead, levelled the shot totals, and grabbed hold of the momentum.

The captain’s line facilitated two increasingly goals surpassing the period was through, Nylander doing his weightier Samsonov impression with a flip-pass setup for Calle Jarnkrok, and then bagging one himself without intercepting an Islanders transplanting attempt.

“JT was spanking-new in that second period,” Keefe said of his captain, whose eight shots during the 20-minute stretch rank as the most he’s overly conglomerate in any period during his 14-year career. “I just thought he made plays. He was nonflexible on the puck, he was winning battles, he was getting in overdue their defence. The goal he scored was great, but there were a number of sequences where he just came out with the puck or held onto the puck.

“There were a number of variegated sequences that he either creates or keeps working just through moving his feet, winning a battle, protecting the puck — all the things that he does at an peerage level all came together in that period.”

In its weightier form, this is how it works. Anyone who’s tuned in to a Maple Leafs game knows the danger Matthews and Marner can create when they’re paired together. The logic of keeping them untied to spread the offensive wealth is clear. Monday’s comeback win, though, showed us flipside piece of that decision’s value — that it turns the Matthews-Marner reunion, and the Nylander-Tavares reunion, into a tool Keefe can undeniability on when its needed most.

In this one, it was, the transpiration unleashing every bit of progress shown from Nylander and Taveres this season, both of whom have looked like the most lethal offensive versions of themselves so far.

What impressed Keefe most well-nigh that overpowering second period, though, wasn’t the offensive outburst from his top six, but the fact that his group took it upon themselves to regroup and go again.

“In that moment, the guys know that that was not a good period,” he said of that first intermission. “You’re hoping that your team’s going to say the right things and be focused and in the right mindset. I don’t finger I need to go in there and say much other than pointing out the obvious and putting the game onto them. They need to respond.

“For us to flip the game like that, it takes a significant effort. The players have to be in the right frame of mind to be worldly-wise to do that. I was really, really impressed with our team’s worthiness to vellicate when and flip the game like that.”

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