SvoNotes: Nylander's hard work paying off for Blue Jackets

SvoNotes is a weekly column by BlueJackets.com reporter Jeff Svoboda.

As Alex Nylander spent the past two years trying to get back to hockey’s highest level, there were likely whispers around the league that a label he wouldn’t like had stuck.

He’s just an AHL player. 

Once, great things were projected of Nylander, who was taken by Buffalo with the No. 8 overall pick in the 2016 NHL Draft and played games for the Sabres a year later. As a top-10 pick, he was thought to be a franchise-changing player, someone who could play top-line minutes and make an outsized impact at the NHL level.

And then, over the years, it just didn’t materialize. He bounced from Buffalo to Chicago – where he got his biggest chance, posting 26 points in 65 games in 2019-20 – to Pittsburgh. When the Blue Jackets acquired him Feb. 22 for Emil Bemstrom and a conditional draft pick, he had played 98 career NHL games and 330 AHL games – including 98 in the AHL and just 14 in the NHL the past two seasons.

To many around the league, he likely had settled in as an AHL player, someone whose game could produce in the minors but fizzled at the highest level.

But the one thing you have to remember about being in the AHL is that it’s still a development league. Nylander came to Columbus still pretty young – he’s just 25 – and had spent the past two years working his tail off to become a better player in Wilkes-Barre Scranton.

And, the funny thing is, he became one. 

“I think it’s helped me a lot,” Nylander said of his time in the AHL. “I put in the hard work every day. I was going out early for practice and stuff like that. I knew it might not help me right now, but it will help me one day later on. No matter if it comes right away or it comes later on, I just kept doing that.

“If I got the chance, I knew that I’d put in the work and I would be ready. Obviously I was there longer than I wanted, but I just stuck with it and kept believing in myself and just kept pushing every day. I believed I could get back into this league.”

So far, the results have been impressive, with Nylander’s eight goals through his first 13 games the most ever for a CBJ player at the start of his Jackets career. He had a hat trick March 3 vs. Vegas and added two goals Saturday in the Jackets’ win over San Jose.

The middle goal of his trio against the Golden Knights was the one that caught the eye of head coach Pascal Vincent. Nylander made much of the play happen himself, backtracking into the defensive zone to force a turnover, quickly transitioning into offense and then beating goalie Logan Thompson with an elite shot from the left circle as he skated up the wing.

“That goal he scored against Vegas, the track,” Vincent said. “The defense that was there; he did a real good job. His speed from here to there between the blue lines. He caught that guy, created the turnover, so that’s the defensive side, the intensity side of the shift. And then to re-attack, the skill side took over, and (he went) post and in. That was a real good indication of his potential.

“His mind-set is right. He wants to take advantage of that chance that he has right now. We want to give him that chance, and so far it’s been working really well.”

The early success has allowed Nylander to settle into a top-line role with the Blue Jackets, as he’s been skating the past five games with fellow wing Johnny Gaudreau and center Boone Jenner. In that time frame, he’s averaged 18:20 of ice time per game, showing he’s earned the trust of Vincent and his staff.

“We knew that he trains hard,” Vincent said. “We know that he’s got speed and quickness. We know that he has good hands. We know that he was an early pick. All these are good, but when the player puts it all together and becomes a real good player, the one thing that I’ve been impressed with him, it’s his hockey sense, his ability to read the game.”

It’s never too late for a player to take advantage of an opportunity, and Nylander has done just that. Whether it’s the right fit, comfort in his new situation or just the hard work paying off, Nylander feels like he’s in the right place at the right time, buoyed by the time he spent in the minors working on his craft.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “I’ve been working on my shot, skating, my tight turns, all that kind of stuff. Obviously down there, you’re able to play your game, do really good stuff, but at the same time work on your defensive zone, play the way you want to play. Obviously, that helped a lot and gave me a lot of confidence.”

Marchenko Fires, Marchenko Scores

Kirill Marchenko looked a lot like Kirill Marchenko when he scored a third-period goal in Tuesday’s game at Detroit.

A season ago, he was a free-wheeling, free-shooting dynamo, showing no remorse when it came to firing the puck at will as a rookie in the NHL. He set the CBJ rookie record with 21 goals, and one of the reasons was he was never shy about shooting the puck, finishing with just four assists in his first-year campaign.

Marchenko was that way at the start of the 2023-24 season as well, posting 133 shots on goal in his first 51 games this year – 2.61 shots on goal per game, with 12.0 percent of them going in for a total of 16 goals.

But in the next 13 games before Tuesday, Marchenko had just 23 shots on goal, an average of 1.77 per contest, and just one of them went in the net. So when he got the puck on the power play in a 2-2 game Tuesday and quickly fired past goalie James Reimer, it was a sign of what makes Marchenko so special.

“It’s a great goal,” Vincent said. “He’s a good shooter, so that’s why he’s there on the power play. We want to see more of that.”

And as the numbers above show, it might just start with simply shooting the puck. Marchenko’s skill in doing so has become obvious across two NHL seasons in which he’s had 39 goals, but his sophomore season has been filled with more ups and downs then his freshman campaign.

All NHL players go through it, but Marchenko acknowledged there have been times this season when he’s thought a bit too much rather than just letting his natural skills take over.

“Sometimes yeah,” he said. “You ask me about shots, sometimes I think a lot. The best point for me, I think I need to relax and play hockey, just trust my instincts and do what I can do and don’t think a lot. But I don’t know what I can say. I try to think off the ice. On the ice, just focus on the game and how I can play.”

It’s a tough balance to strike sometimes, especially when the pucks aren’t going in as much as they had been. Marchenko has five goals in 34 games since notching a hat trick in Buffalo in December, and for someone whose confidence rarely seems shaken, he has looked a bit more tentative at times in recent weeks.

It hasn’t helped that injuries have led to a number of shakeups in the CBJ lineup, but Marchenko said he’s doing his best to finish strong and mesh with his new linemates as the end of the season nears.

“I think I can shoot all the pucks, but sometimes I try to play smart,” he said. “We have a good line, and we try to help each other. We try to play the pass, too, but sometimes the pass doesn’t work. Maybe more focus on the shots. But if a guy is open, I try to make the pass. If it’s a good chance for shot for me, I do. I just play the game.”