{"id":88957,"date":"2025-08-22T14:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T14:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/88957\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T14:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T14:57:07","slug":"marner-wasnt-thinking-of-leaving-maple-leafs-last-season-nylander-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/88957\/","title":{"rendered":"Marner wasn’t ‘thinking of leaving’ Maple Leafs last season, Nylander says"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN — William Nylander<\/a> said Mitch Marner<\/a> was a \u201cgreat teammate\u201d and an \u201cincredible person,\u201d and scoffed at the notion the forward was already looking to leave the Toronto Maple Leafs midway through last season.<\/p>\n

Nylander said Marner\u2019s sole focus on the ice was to bring success to a franchise that has not won a Stanley Cup since 1967, dispelling the narrative he may have been looking to head elsewhere with him eligible to become an unrestricted free agent after the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot sure where that stuff comes from, but I don\u2019t think he was ever thinking of leaving ahead of time,\u201d Nylander told NHL.com at the NHL\/NHL Players Association European Player Media Tour on Friday. \u201cI actually asked him during the season and he said he was concentrating on Toronto. I didn\u2019t want to press him on that and let him be because it was obviously on his mind, but his play was focused on helping us. Then I asked him after the season and he wasn\u2019t sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marner eventually went to the Vegas Golden Knights on July 1 as part of a sign-and-trade<\/a>, landing an eight-year, $96 million contract ($12 million average annual value) in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough seeing him go but I\u2019m so happy for him and his family,\u201d Nylander said. \u201cHe got to pick where he went so, in that aspect, I\u2019m happy for him. We\u2019re going to miss him a lot but that\u2019s just the business of the sport. That\u2019s the way it is. So we\u2019ve got to regroup as a team and figure out a way to keep winning games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nylander pointed out that he and Marner grew up together in Toronto, teammates with the Maple Leafs since 2016. As for the highly publicized heated exchange the two had on the bench during the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs in which he told Marner to \u201cgrow up,\u201d Nylander laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hockey,\u201d he said. \u201cThings happen in the heat of battle. There was too much read into that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came in and played our first full season together and our friendship just grew from there. He\u2019s an incredible person. Off the ice too. He was the one making sure that we had team events like Halloween parties, dinners, all those kind of events. He would set those things up. Somebody\u2019s going to have to take on that role now because because he did an incredible job doing all that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, just being a friend on the side, just an incredible guy. I could always talk to him about whatever. He\u2019ll be missed. And for what he does on the ice, just an incredible player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nylander said it will be difficult for Toronto to replace Marner\u2019s production — he had an NHL career-high 102 points (27 goals, 75 assists) in 81 games last season and was the League’s fifth-leading scorer — but praised Maple Leafs management for adding offensive depth in forwards Matias Maccelli<\/a>, Dakota Joshua<\/a> and Nicolas Roy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the process, Nylander said the Maple Leafs should take positives in pushing the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers to seven games in their best-of-7 Eastern Conference Second Round.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was probably one of our best seasons since I\u2019ve been in Toronto,\u201d the 29-year-old said. \u201cI mean, we pushed Florida to the limit. We had a couple of (bad) games against them, Games 5 and 7, but for the most part we were right there in that series. So I think we can really build off that and learn from what we did wrong to be better in those situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nylander said he does not know if he will be linemates with captain Auston Matthews<\/a>, adding he can play anywhere in the lineup.<\/p>\n

As for his own performance, he\u2019s coming off an NHL career-best 45-goal season and hopes to improve on that this season. In fact, when reminded he told NHL.com during the 2019 EPMT in Stockholm that \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to dominate,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN — William Nylander said Mitch Marner was a \u201cgreat teammate\u201d and an \u201cincredible person,\u201d and scoffed at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-88957","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\/88957","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=88957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}