The Washington Capitals are in a tough situation. The meanest way I could put it is: their core is rotting. Kuznetsov wants out, Backstrom isn’t the same, Wilson is still recovering, Mantha isn’t working out, etc, etc etc. We know the team promised Alex Ovechkin they’d be competitive next season, and we know that getting Ovi to the goal-scoring record is a priority as well.

So what if – and this is a big what if – they got Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander to help them out with both of those projects? And how could they do it?

Nylander, 27, scored 40 goals and tallied 47 assists for the Toronto Maple Leafs last season. He has almost always played right wing, but he takes a lot of faceoffs too. He is an elite offensive player, and he just might be available.

Stung by their playoff disappointment, the Leafs seem determined to shake up their Core Four (Matthews, Marner, Tavares, and Nylander), of whom Nylander is the cheapest ($6.9 million average-annual value, if you round down) and most movable. This week on the 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman said that the Leafs will not “run it back,” which I think means they intend to change their lineup before next season. That will be the last season on Nylander’s current contract, which has a ten-team no-trade clause that will go into effect at the beginning of July. The team would therefore be most motivated to move him before then – probably before or during the NHL Draft, which begins on June 28.

So we know they’re going to move someone, and we think they’re probably going to move him specifically, and it’s probably going to be soon.

I need to emphasize that William Nylander is an excellent hockey player. HockeyViz estimates that Nylander improves his team’s offense by 17 percentage points during even-strength play and 12 points during the power play. Evolving Hockey puts him in the 95th percentile for offense. Corey Sznajder rates him as an elite zone-entry player.

One concern I had was that Nylander might be too much of an individual scorer to be an ideal partner for Alex Ovechkin. Nylander ranked 12th in individual shot-attempt rate this season, two spots above Ovi. But I don’t think he would cannibalize Ovechkin’s offense much; he’s still somewhat charitable in setting up his linemates, with an assist rate int the top 15 percent among forwards. (But I admit there are better options out there for assisting Ovechkin, and we’ll get to one of them on another day.) Below is the rate of expected goals generated by the Leafs when Nylander has been on the ice over the past five seasons. The dark blue is Nylander’s own contributions, the light blue is everyone else on the ice with him.

Nylander accounts for about 30 percent of his team’s total offense. That’s high for a setup-man/playmaker and more common for a line’s star scorer. But that overall offense rate is very high – only nine non-Leafs had a higher on-ice rate. Meanwhile, here’s Ovi.

When he’s on the ice, Ovechkin is personally responsible for about 37 percent of his team’s offense — he’s obvious the main threat of his line — and his team’s overall rate is still about the same as what Nylander’s was last season. The big difference is at the other end of the ice, where Ovechkin’s Caps allowed opponents to generate about half an xG more per hour.

Nylander should help with that; he’s strong (but not elite) at transitioning play to offense, with a high rate of zone exits with possession. But he’s less strong at getting the puck back in the first place, a common criticism of him in Toronto. Among full-time Leafs forwards, only Michael Bunting saw opponents get a higher rate of scoring chances when on the ice. An Ovechkin-Nylander pairing would have offensive potency, but not without defensive tradeoffs. We’re kind of used to that by now, right?

I don’t know precisely how the Caps would get Nylander, but I want to discuss the mythological Willy-for-Willy trade, which makes way more sense than I thought at first. Tom Wilson‘s value is comparable to Nylander’s — or at least it was before Wilson suffered his ACL injury. Back in 2021-22, Wilson provided 13.8 goals-above-replacement according to Evolving Hockey, and Nylander provided 12.4. Wilson was a very strong defensive player that year, reducing opponent offense by eight percentage points according to HockeyViz. That would make him attractive to a Leafs team that wants to get tougher and better without the puck. And Wilson and Nylander both have one year remaining on their current contracts, so the medium-term risk would be low.

But Wilson’s recovery timeline and overall viability should be in doubt. He needs to be better than he was in 33 games this season, ranking 14th out of 15 forwards in shot-attempt share, expected-goal share, and actual-goal share. More conditioning, a new coach, and better linemates will all help him improve, but it’s not certain he can return to those previous heights, and that might make Toronto balk at a one-for-one deal.

I feel like I just lobbed a psychic grenade at Caps fans, but I can’t get the idea of Nylander in red out of my head, playing on Ovechkin’s flank, adding scoring, reinforcing the core, and generally bringing more fun than we’ve seen from this team lately.

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Headline photos: NHL.com