Treliving on Nylander: 'We're hopeful that he'll be with us for a long time'

Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving reiterated Tuesday that he's hoping to sign William Nylander to a contract extension.

Nylander, who is currently scheduled to hit unrestricted free agency in July, has given his agent permission to continue negotiations into the season. 

"We haven't signed a contract yet, so that's probably my update right now," Treliving told First Up on TSN Radio 1050 Toronto. "I've stated it publicly: William's a terrific player. He's a star player and we want to extend Willy. I've had lots of talks with Willy. He loves Toronto, he loves the franchise, loves the city, the people – so I would think that's a good place to start.

"We're not going to talk about it publicly. Our focus is going to be on the ice. We'll continue to work in the background on the business side. Obviously Willy's attention is going to be on getting started tomorrow and having a terrific year and we'll keep plugging away and certainly once we have good news, we'll be sure to let everybody know. We're going to do a daily update on it and hopefully we can get to a point where we've got good news. 

"He's a terrific player and we're hopeful that he'll be with us for a long time."

The 27-year-old forward is coming off a career year, having posted 40 goals and 87 points in 82 games with the Maple Leafs last season. He added four goals and 10 points in 11 playoff games before the team was eliminated in the second round. 

Following his strong campaign, Nylander was ranked at No. 40 on the TSN Hockey Top 50 players list.

Nylander carries a cap hit of $6.96 million in the last season of his current six-year contract. He signed that deal with then-general manager Kyle Dubas in 2018. After being unable to come to a contract agreement that kept him out of the Maple Leafs' lineup to start the 2018-19 season, Nylander inked a deal worth a total of $45 million and carried a value of $10.2 million in the first season, but narrowed to $6.9 million in the years that followed. The deal carries a 10-team no-trade list this season.

He opted not to negotiate a new deal during the 2017-18 season ahead of becoming a restricted free-agent.

“Just focusing on playing. I don’t remember what I was thinking at that point,” Nylander told Jonas Siegel of The Athletic last week of his mindset at that time.

Drafted by the Maple Leafs with the eighth-overall pick in the 2014 draft, Nylander has scored 177 goals and recorded 430 points in 521 regular-season games.