Jim Hiller on William Nylander’s recent struggles: “He’s trying… He wants to do well for the team, and his heart’s in the right place… He knows he’s not playing his best”
After Wednesday’s practice, Jim Hiller discussed needing to get William Nylander going, why he’s kept Nylander with John Tavares, and how his players are responding to a four-game losing streak.
What’s the latest on Zack MacEwen and his outlook moving forward?
Hiller: I was just talking to him. We’ll see tomorrow. He got better as the day went along today. We’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow. Not much of an update.
You go way back with William Nylander from your first time here. What have you learned about the best way to get him going when he’s in a funk?
Hiller: I’ve been trying to support him as best I can, really. I think he’s trying. I think what happens to a lot of us is we get in our own head a little bit. He wants to do well for the team. His heart’s in the right place.
He knows he’s not playing his best. That’s obvious, and he wants to. We’ve just got to help him try to clear it out, free himself, and get him out there just skating and playing.
Why do you think that’s happening?
Hiller: It’s difficult to evaluate John after being out for a month. We threw him in the lineup. We’re banged up. We’re making him play a lot of minutes coming off an injury, right? And he’s hardly practiced with the team, so that’s going to be part of it, for sure.
I think Tverberg helped them. I really liked Tverberg’s game last night. If you guys watched, he was in on the forecheck. He did some of the things we talked about. I’m hoping that’s going to translate into more O-zone time for them and get John back up to speed. Then we’re talking about how good they are in the O-zone instead of what they’re doing in the D-zone.
The injuries limit your flexibility, but why have you kept Tavares and Nylander together through this stretch?
Hiller: One thing is the injuries, yeah. We’ve tried a lot of different line combinations, as you can imagine. I’m sure you guys write them down night after night. But based on injuries, we have four centermen right now, and we’ve got to go one, two, three, four.
And they’ll work their way out of it. They’re world-class players. We’ve got full trust and belief in them. We’ve all had a bad little stretch. We know that. Again, it’ll come.
Less than a month ago, you were on a four-game winning streak. Now you’re on the opposite end of it. What was clicking then that isn’t right now?
Hiller: I don’t know. It’s a funny game sometimes. Were we playing better? Yes. Were we playing way better? There are different ways to evaluate that. You can look at expected goals. You can look at all kinds of different things. I don’t think there’s one thing that will tell you definitively, “Oh, they were playing so much better.”
Our special teams were very good at that point. If you said, “Let’s take your special teams for that four-game win streak and put them over these last four games,” then it looks different. And then you say, “Hey, you guys are playing pretty good. You just won four in a row.”
It’s difficult. You’ve just got to stick together, be positive, work, and get better. There are always ebbs and flows. We are in an ebb. Let’s be honest. We’ll own that, but we’ll get on.
What led to the change on defense today, with Chris Tanev and Dakota Mermis together?
Hiller: I wouldn’t read too much into it. We’re always just doing different things for different reasons. Sometimes some guys will take fewer reps. They’ve got to penalty kill. Some guys have got the power play. There are different things some days that we plan on based on practice that shift those guys around.
You talked about the need for the team to stick together. It seemed like a strong practice out there. How would you assess the mood?
Hiller: I would say it’s good based on the circumstances. It can’t be great based on losing. We’re not in here and everybody’s laughing and joking and dancing to the music. But understanding where we’re at, digging ourselves a deeper hole mentally and emotionally, will not help us. That’s what I know. The guys are positive.
We’ve played really good stretches of hockey. If you look at last night, there were not a lot of mistakes, but some catastrophic mistakes again. And you just can’t win if you do it that way.
How hard is it that this losing slide is happening at home?
Hiller: Listen, that’s hard on everybody. It is. But we’re not winning. We’re in the business of winning. The next question you ask yourself is, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to show up at work the next day? And what are you going to do about it?
To me, we had a good day. We had a good meeting. We had a good practice. You saw it. Lots of intensity, some battles. Let’s get on with it. We’re playing a high level of competition here in this stretch. No problem. Dig in.
Toronto vs. Minnesota - November 12
Maple Leafs Projected Lines
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