Leafs' media already beginning to turn on William Nylander; Will history repeat itself?

Over the last few years, the main thing that the Toronto media has been accused of, is running their star players into the ground, and then subsequently out of the city with the over-reporting and negative diatribe.

The Mitch Marner situation is probably the best example, where the media essentially cast him as the black sheep, which forced the Leafs to let him seek greener pastures without a second thought.

With Marner out of the picture, the hope was that a media parade like that was never going to be repeated, but it sounds like old habits die hard with the recent dialogue surrounding William Nylander feeling oddly similar.

Without their star winger, the Leafs are 3-0-2 over their last 5 games, which has been brought on by an offensive explosion. However, several media outlets, including Sportsnet 590 The FAN, believe that maybe they don't necessarily need him back any time soon due to their recent successes without him.

Sam McKee started the conversation that the Leafs look better without Nylander, adding that the energy level looks completely different. Nick Kypreos piggy-backed on the latter idea, while adding that maybe that could allow them to explore trade options for Nylander, that would net them the necessary pieces to fill out their roster.

On the other hand, Justin Bourne was completely against the idea and felt that even talking about trading Nylander is insane, because you're not going to get better by moving him, and it's going to be very difficult to find the right trade partner to begin with.

While they were bickering about Nylander's place on the team amidst his absence, Zack Phillips from the 'The Leafs Nation' podcast was questioning his spot in the lineup, and where he'd fit upon his return.

His idea was that Nylander would slide onto the fourth line next to Steven Lorentz and Scott Laughton because the aforementioned duo play solid defensively and would allow Nylander some freedom, while also forcing him into playing a bit more aggressively.

Additionally, with how the rest of the lines have fared in recent games, the Leafs shouldn't look to split anything up because of Nylander's return. While maybe true, reincorporating a talent like Nylander back into the top-6 is the only plausible move to getting better and trying to make in-roads in the standings.

These were all somewhat said in jest but it brings us back to the main point that we need to learn from past mistakes and avoid running another star out of town because we think we're better off without them for a short period of time.

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