Mitch Marner ranked #4 on NHL Network's Top-20 winger list while William Nylander ranked #10 which doesn't necessarily mean Toronto made a mistake, but shows the comparison of what Toronto kept and lost.
Marner's ranking pushed him ahead of names like Mikko Rantanen and Jason Robertson after 80 points in 81 games while adding a team-high 29 points in 22 playoff games, and scored the fastest hat-trick in Stanley Cup Finals history when he added a trio of goals in only 6:10 during Game 3 vs. Carolina.
It also put him way above former teammate William Nylander, who ranked 10th. While he had a strong season with 79 points in 65 games and was part of Team Sweden at the Olympics, Nylander struggled with injuries in the midst of an overall down season for the entirety of the Maple Leafs.
However it does start to shed new light on Toronto's commitment to Nylander and we can start to pick apart exactly why the NHL Network believes Marner ranks so high.
NHL Network sees Marner as the more complete winger
Marner offers an elite two-way game and is one of the best pure playmakers in the NHL. His 259 assists from 2022-23 to 2025-26 ranks 8th in the league over that span, while also managing to have an on-ice goals for percentage of 60.6% in the same span - he's on the ice for over 60% of goals scored.
That's an incredible amount of offensive help for Auston Matthews and it's understandable why he thrived so much with Marner because he was able to trust him to a) get him the puck and b) not lose the puck. Plus, Marner also spent over 600 minutes on the PK from 2022-23 to 2025-26, so he wasn't strictly offensive and could be effective no matter what.
Compare it to Nylander who is more scoring driven and offensive. Over the same span as Marner, Nylander has spent only 108 minutes on the PK. He's not someone who you typically rely on defensively, and his strengths lie in his ability to breakaway in transition.
It's why he ranks 11th in goals scored over that four-year span with 155 ahead of the likes of Alex Ovechkin and Jason Robertson, meanwhile Nylander is only 18 points behind Marner's total in the exact same amount of games - so he's ahead in the scoring department (goals) but Marner's overall offence is distributed.
Granted, this is just NHL Network's opinion and doesn't reflect Nylander's value to the Maple Leafs nor does it automatically mean Marner is better. It's just that Marner's overall skillset offers more to his team coupled with his accomplishments last year earned him those accolades.
Nylander now has to own the contract that Toronto is paying him
But Marner is out of the picture now and Nylander is being paid like a star so he needs to step up his game even more. He's not playing second fiddle to Marner and Matthews, and now needs to be that offence driver either beside Matthews or on his own line.
He's being paid $11.5-million ($92-million total) which puts him as the 15th-highest paid player in the NHL (per Puckpedia). He needs to start adding more to his game in order to justify paying him that much money - not just 30 goals and 75 points, and he's signed until 2032 so we're here for the long haul.
That means improving on defence and staying actively engaged at all times, being someone who is tough to play against and doesn't rely on his teammates to help gather the puck for him. He has historically fantastic possession numbers, and several seasons have him with more takeaways than giveaways.
He can utilize his speed to catch up to opponents, find possession himself, then use his quick hands and acceleration to lead the offensive charge. He's more than capable of reaching that 98-point plateau he hit in 2023-24, but getting there will depend on how he's used and if there are any injuries.
This isn't an argument to make Nylander a penalty killer though, and Toronto made it clear that adding role players who fit that specific role was necessary to help the star players like Matthews and Nylander.
Toronto really doesn't care if Nylander finished 20th, 10th, or 1st on the NHL Network's ranking list, because it's arbitrary. Through offensive responsibility and elite production he'll be judged on whether or not he's going to be a dependable game-breaker for the next half decade.
Do you think that Toronto bet wrong by choosing William Nylander over Mitch Marner?
Also read on Hockey Patrol :
Sergei Bobrovsky joined the Maple Leafs, but Toronto may have made his job harder