MISSISSAUGA—It took Alex Nylander less than two seconds to pull this off on the ice. Explaining one of the most highlight-reel-worthy goals of the OHL season so far verbally, however, takes a fair bit longer.
Here goes the 17-year-old Mississauga Steelheads rookie, sitting on a black couch outside his coach’s office at the Hershey Centre, blonde hair still wet from practice, feet in flip-flops, dressed head-to-toe in navy blue Steelheads-issued gear. “The puck came to me close to the blueline, high slot,” Nylander says. “Then I was coming towards the D, looking for a place to shoot. I didn’t find any, so I pulled the puck to my backhand.
“Then back to my forehand. Then between the defenceman’s stick and his skate,” he says. “Then a couple other players tried to hit my stick away. Then forehand, backhand. Then between the [goalie’s] legs.”
Yes, this is a Nylander of the Hockey Nylanders: NHL Draft eligible in 2016, younger brother to Maple Leafs’ eighth-overall pick, William, and son of former NHLer, Michael. But this Calgary-born Swedish right-winger, the youngest of the hockey-playing-Nylanders, has quickly made a name for himself all on his own.
Steelheads GM and head coach James Boyd knew Nylander would be quicker to adjust to the OHL game than most other import players, because while Nylander played the last couple seasons in Sweden, he grew up playing on NHL-sized rinks most of his career, following his father to markets like Chicago and Washington and New York. Still, Boyd didn’t expect Nylander to make such an impact, so fast. “I did figure it would take him a little time to acclimatize,” the coach says.
Instead, Nylander has 21 points (10 goals, 11 assists) in 14 games, good for third overall in OHL scoring. Only Erie Otters centreman Alex DeBrincat leads Nylander in points among players in the upcoming NHL draft class (23 in 12 games). Windsor’s Gabriel Vilardi is the next-best rookie, with 12 points.
Nylander jokes around with teammates in practice, you can see his smile from the stands, and he pumps his fist playfully if he beats a linemate in a one-on-one drill. “It’s so fun playing here,” he says, pointing out the crowds OHL teams regularly draw are “amazing, and it’s so easy to get pumped.”
Another big benefit to being in North America, he says, is all the NHL games he can watch at a reasonable hour. “Every day, there’s like three. It’s so nice. In Sweden you have to stay up ’til 2 a.m. if you want to watch.”
Nylander moved to Toronto a couple months ago with his dad, who’s an assistant coach with the Steelheads. (His answer to what it’s like with dad as coach is public relations perfect, to the tune of his experiencing helping everyone get better every day).
The Nylanders are renting a place near downtown Toronto, but are looking to buy a house in Mississauga, at which point Nylander says his mom and four sisters (Michelle, 22, Jackie, 14, Stephanie, 12 and Daniella, 9) will be moving from Stockholm to join them. William may also move into the family home.
Nylander says he wasn’t nervous about moving to the GTA, in part because moving is nothing new. Ask him where he lived and when as a kid, and he says, “I have no idea.” And of course having William in the area helped with the transition. They talk every day, and they’ve each attended a handful of one another’s games. The competitive relationship they had as kids, breaking a good number of windows while playing hockey in the basement or on rollerblades in the driveway, hasn’t changed. “[William] liked to play goalie when we were younger, so I’ve got a better shot. Probably,” Nylander says, smiling. “We compete in anything we do. Tennis, ping-pong, pool, X-Box. Everything.”
Even hair. Like William, Nylander has a similar envy-inducing full blonde coif. “Mine is better,” he says, grinning. “I’m just kidding. His is better I think, actually.” (Nylander has plans for his this hair year: “Not a mullet, but I’ll grow it longer.”)
Their skills are similar, and being brothers, they’re often compared: Both are slippery with the puck and skate well. The younger Nylander is a bit taller, listed at 6-feet. “William’s more of an attack-the-net guy,” Boyd says, “whereas Alex is more of a setup man.”
It sounds like they’d be ideal linemates, though Nylander wouldn’t really know. The Brothers Nylander played on the same team only in one tournament, when they were 13 and 11. (They were linemates and won the tournament.) The possibility of playing together at the world juniors later this year, Nylander says, “would be a dream come true.” And while being drafted to the NHL is and has been his goal since he was a kid, with his brother now in the Leafs’ system, the younger Nylander says it would be “unreal” to join him there.
The attention on the Steelheads’ Nylander is going to intensify as this season continues, and he knows it. He’s come as close as any kid to living the life of an NHL player via his dad or going through a draft via his brother. He grew up in NHL rinks, even got to walk around in dressing rooms every once in a while and hang out with guys like Nicklas Backstrom. “I knew I wanted to play in the NHL, it’s always been in my head,” Nylander says. “I got to feel how it was a little bit then. It continues to be my goal.”
And if having a dad who played 14 NHL seasons and a brother picked top 10 in 2014 is making him feel added pressure ahead of next year’s NHL Draft, Nylander hides it well. “It’s actually something I do not think about—really,” he says. “I’m just trying to play here, create a name for myself here, show them what I can do.”
It’s been working so far.
On that highlight-reel goal he scored in his third game, Boyd was on the bench, and a little worried. He saw three Peterborough Petes, and just Nylander.
“I was thinking, ‘He’s gonna get killed here,’” Boyd says, smiling. “And then, ‘Oh, he scored.’”