Maple Leafs’ William Nylander jokes about scoring twice in OT win over Blues

Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander poked fun at himself for his own goal during Tuesday’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

With tensions running high, as the team entered the contest on a five-game losing streak, the temperature rose in the early going when Nylander accidentally knocked the puck out of the air and into his own net. In a vacuum, it was an unlucky break, but the goal felt like further proof that things were spiralling out of control for the team.

Nylander was able to redeem himself when it counted by converting on the overtime winner to cap off what he described as his “two-goal” night.

“Yeah, snipe. Ah, I don’t know,” Nylander said of his miscue, post-game. “To be honest, I don’t even know what I was thinking, but it was a little bit reactionary, I think. But it was nice to find the back of the net early.”

Nylander apologized to Joseph Woll to apologize for the mistake, Woll accepted it and everyone was able to move on. It was clear from his play that he didn’t allow the mistake to snowball into other ones as he was controlling the pace, generating plenty of scoring chances, and eventually got rewarded for it with his aforementioned OT winner.

“I think that’s what is needed to be a good team and to be able to win those kind of games,” he said. “We were losing a lot of games, losing a lot of guys. I mean, that’s a lot of adversity right there, so learn from the process.”

While the focus is squarely on the way he capped off the night, Nylander made sure to give props to his teammates for their contributions to the win. He was impressed with how steady Woll was in the game, was impressed with the play John Tavares made in setting up the OT winner, and felt both Jacob Quillan and Troy Stecher did well in their debuts given the tricky circumstances.

It certainly helped to have a guy like Nylander who doesn’t let the noise in the Toronto market get to him, even when times are tough.

“I mean, I think you have to and that’s something that I’ve learned playing here,” he said. “ There are ups and downs always in every season. If it’s a team or a person or whatever, it happens. So I just gotta stay even.”

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