It was a great day to be William Nylander on Monday as the news broke that he had signed the largest contract handed out by the Maple Leafs in their history. Nylander, locked in a deal that is eight years and $92 million, holding an AAV of $11.5 million per season.
During the Kyper and Bourne show on Sportsnet, Nylander was invited to speak about his new deal and to give some context as to how he feels being a Maple Leaf for the next eight seasons. It was clear, though, that there were some undertones in what he had to say when it came to how long it took to sign this deal compared to his last one.
These undertones were clearly directed towards former general manager Kyle Dubas who handled the first Nylander contract back in 2018. After a grueling summer of negotiations and not achieving their goal, Nylander decided to sit out a portion of that season while he waited for a new deal to transpire.
Eventually, his agent Lewis Gross and Dubas along with Nylander's father Michael managed to craft a deal that kept him in Toronto for six years for a total of $45 million, which was a team-friendly deal with a cap hit of $6.96 million per season though he did lose 26 games of seasonal play during the holdout.
Obviously something didn't sit quite right with Nylander about the Dubas negotiations back in 2018. However, now that Dubas is gone and Treliving occupies the GM's office in Toronto, it's clear that there's been a shift in how things are addressed now, with Treliving showing a lot more urgency to get things done, rather than just sitting on his hands as Dubas had done during the last Nylander negotiations.
