MILAN – Toronto Maple Leafs winger William Nylander missed Sweden’s practice on Tuesday and is questionable for the team’s Olympic opener on Wednesday against Italy.

“It’s a maintenance thing,” said coach Sam Hallam. “He’s done two full ice practices with us and felt after yesterday a bit sore so just give him an extra day and then we’ll see for tomorrow if he’s ready to go or it’s going to be a pretty late decision.”

Nylander returned from a nagging groin injury on Jan. 31 and proceeded to produce one goal and three assists during Toronto’s three game winning streak heading into the Olympic break.

Nylander sustained a groin injury in a game against the Ottawa Senators on Dec. 27. He missed the next six games before returning to the Leafs lineup on Jan. 10. He played four games before re-aggravating the injury during a game against the Vegas Golden Knights on Jan. 15. He missed the next seven games, which was the longest injury-related absence of his NHL career.

William Nylander is not on the ice at 🇸🇪 practice

Leafs winger returned from a groin injury on Jan. 31

Sweden plays its first game at Olympics tomorrow against host 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/t5Z1Df1RyZ

— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) February 10, 2026

Considering how long Nylander has been bothered by the injury, how concerned is Hallam?

“Not overly concerned at all,” the coach said. “He’s been looking really sharp and good on the ice for two days. Felt we [could] give him off today. It’s a short tournament, but we’re still in the beginning of it and bigger games coming up so let’s keep our priorities and focus there.”

Sweden will also play Slovakia and Finland in the preliminary round. Every team is guaranteed to advance to the next stage of the tournament.

Nylander is projected to play on Sweden’s top line with Joel Eriksson Ek and Adrian Kempe. With 52 points in 40 games, Nylander leads all Swedish Olympians in points per game this season.

“To be honest, I haven’t heard or haven’t talked to him this morning, so it’s hard for me to say,” said Kempe when asked if he was worried about Nylander’s status. “We all hope that he’s going to play because he’s a big key to our team and big-time player, so hopefully he’ll be alright.”

Nylander is rooming with Leafs teammate Oliver Ekman-Larsson in the Olympic Village.

“He’s doing good,” said Ekman-Larsson, who has been skating on Sweden’s fourth pair at practice. “Yeah, I don’t want to get into it too much, but I think he’s fine.”

What’s he like as a roommate?

“He’s sleeping a lot, so it’s nice and quiet,” Ekman-Larsson said with a grin. “Hopefully I don’t keep him up at night with my snoring. It’s been good.”

Reporters have not seen Nylander on the ice since Sweden’s first practice on Sunday. The team made the decision to close Monday’s workout to the media, which created a stir and some media criticism.

“You killed me for that so I’m going to keep it open here,” Hallam said with a smile when asked about the decision by TSN. “I’ve never had the opportunity to do it and sometimes nice to just have that calmness around it. The players are used to always having a lot of people around it so just closing down the rink, for us, just having that feeling … There’s no mysteries. We’re not going to invent something new out there, you know it, but just keeping it a bit calm is nice.”

There are no closed practices in the NHL, but the IOC allows closed training sessions at the Olympics.

Team Canada also closed its practice on Monday with coach Jon Cooper saying he wanted to limit distractions at the small practice rink in Milan.

Czechia and Denmark are scheduled to hold closed practices on Tuesday.