{"id":466292,"date":"2026-02-10T17:53:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/466292\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T17:53:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:53:06","slug":"william-nylander-misses-practice-ahead-of-swedens-olympic-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/466292\/","title":{"rendered":"William Nylander misses practice ahead of Sweden’s Olympic opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN, Italy \u2014\u00a0William Nylander<\/a> did not join his Swedish teammates on the ice for Tuesday\u2019s practice at Milano Santagiulia Arena and is questionable to suit up Wednesday for the country’s opening Olympic game versus Italy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a maintenance thing. He\u2019s done two full practices with us and felt after yesterday a bit sore, so just give him an extra day,\u201d head coach Sam Hallam told reporters. \u201cWe\u2019ll see for tomorrow if he\u2019s ready to go or it\u2019s going to be a pretty late decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nylander has missed 17 games for the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> this season, mostly due to a lingering groin injury.<\/p>\n

Shortly before flying to Italy, however, the superstar said his groin injury never had him worried about missing his first Winter Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat experience is going to be incredible,\u201d Nylander said last week. \u201cPlaying with Team Sweden and playing against the best players in the world at an Olympics is something that doesn\u2019t happen too often. And it\u2019ll be a first for me, so I\u2019m going to be very excited for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs\u2019 leading scorer tops all countrymen by averaging 1.3 points per game and is considered the face of Sweden hockey. His game-breaking offence will be integral if the country has any hope to upset for a gold medal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fine with it, and I\u2019m happy to be in that position for sure,\u201d Nylander said. \u201cGoing there for the mindset to be happy with the silver or bronze, I mean, why are you going there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Teammate and Olympic village roommate Oliver Ekman-Larsson suggested to reporters Tuesday that Nylander will be \u201cfine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maintenance days for Nylander are not out of the norm this winter, and he\u2019s too important to both his teams to not arrive fresh for game action.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s always kind of been the guy. Whenever he\u2019s wearing that (Tre Kronor) jersey, a lot of fans get excited,\u201d Ekman-Larsson told Sportsnet.ca.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Toronto market is big back home, so that feeds into the national team. I think he\u2019s always, like, the face in that way. But obviously he\u2019s an unbelievable player and important player in the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN, Italy \u2014\u00a0William Nylander did not join his Swedish teammates on the ice for Tuesday\u2019s practice at Milano…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-466292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}