William Nylander only played 14 minutes in Sunday night’s 5-2 win over the Florida Panthers, but head coach Sheldon Keefe saw a much better performance out of his right winger a couple months of lagging play and one call-out in his press conference.
The icetime is not a consequence of a lighter role or an on-ice in the pants leading to better play from Nylander. In fact, Mitch Marner and the first line only played two more minutes than Nylander at 5v5. The real minutes-eating line in that game was the John Tavares, Ilya Mikheyev, and Alex Kerfoot second line.