William Nylander's Goal vs Utah: Leveraging Five Hole & Stripping Puck in DZ
Last night, the Nylander brothers made their debut together in Toronto. Although they played a slim amount of time together at 5v5, they didn’t play together too much, but William scored a classic William Nylander-style goal on Karel Vejmelka last night. It was an excellent goal where Nylander effortlessly was able to find the five hole through Vejmelka, one of the most underrated goalies in the league because of the team he is on. Vejmelka is averaging over 1 goals saved above expected this season, ranking 1st relative to other goalies in the NHL, and he’s done it with bad defense and lots of scoring given up defensively from Utah.
Nylander was able to maneuver by creating space initially, and did a great job stripping the puck in the D Zone efficiently from Utah’s strong side player, allowing Nylander to create an individual rush and breakaway sequence.
Nylander had great speed behind the puck to propel past D1 and D2 of Utah, and used his straight-line speed and stride to propel himself to create a breakaway sequence here. Nylander did a great job of using his speed and handling the puck effectively with speed, and then uses more speed on the breakaway with the puck to stickhandle and eventually fool Vejmelka. Nylander stickhandles, and realizing that Vejmelka is going to go down and move across the crease laterally, Nylander maneuvers and is able to open up the five hole of Vejmelka in this scenario.
By cutting across laterally and opening that seam moving laterally, Vejmelka naturally has to open up his five hole in order to get set to the angle of Nylander. Nylander does a quick job of reading it, and then by opening it up, Nylander is able to maneuver to his backhand and quickly slips the puck underneath Vejmelka.
It’s a slight skill Nylander is really underrated at doing and has become really good at executing in the NHL. He’s become quick at reading plays moving laterally and cutting across laterally to open seams down low in goaltenders, allowing him to score in a way that looks effortless because of that.
The initial strip from Nylander on Cooley in the defensive zone allowed Nylander to take advantage here, where with the D collapsed middle, that also allowed him to take advantage of space with speed here as well.