Since the calendar flipped to 2025, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ play has been up and down.

Through 14 games leading up to week 18 of their season, they had gone on two winning streaks of three or more games and two three-game losing streaks. As week 18 began against the Calgary Flames, they looked to start their third winning streak of the new year.

The man who can’t stop scoring goals had a game to remember last week, recording his second career hat trick exactly eight years from the date he recorded his first one (February 8, 2017, vs Boston). Last week, I spoke about Nylander’s assist totals, and how they’ve been low compared to previous seasons. However, he is scoring at a career-high rate (0.60 per game), putting him on pace to finish the season with a career-high 49 goals.

Despite going pointless in the last two games of week 18 against Seattle and Vancouver, Nylander started week 18 with a bang in his hometown, scoring a hat trick in Toronto’s 6-3 win over Calgary, improving his goal total to 33 and point total to 55 on the season.

As the NHL heads into the 4 Nations Faceoff break, Nylander sits in second place in the Rocket Richard race, seven goals behind Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl and his 40.

If anybody needed that four-game road trip out west, it was Morgan Rielly. The 30-year-old defenceman has had a season to forget so far. Before last week’s games, Rielly, known for his offensive ability on Toronto’s blue line, was on pace for just 36 points, his lowest total over an 82-game pace since the 2016-17 season (29 points).

If the points aren’t coming and the play away from the puck isn’t helping the team, as Maple Leafs fans have seen at times, there’s a chance it can get ugly, and it has. Plus-minus isn’t the be-all and end-all, but Rielly entered week 18 with the worst plus-minus on the team with a minus-19 through 52 games. He kicked it off with an assist against the Oilers to end week 17 and carried that into last week, recording a point in each of the next three games, including the Maple Leafs’ lone goal against the Canucks on Saturday night, his sixth of the season.

This four-game point streak from Rielly matches the longest of his season, dating back to the end of October. But it’s not just the points that made Rielly’s week look good. He looked comfortable out on the ice and like his former self. He demanded the puck in the offensive zone and created offence with his shot. Rielly recorded two or more shots in four consecutive games for the first time since, you guessed it, the end of October, the same time he had his last four-game winning streak.

If you look at the counting stats, Auston Matthews not only recorded five points last week, but those points led his team in scoring despite not having scored a goal in six consecutive games, the longest drought of his career since the 2018-19 season when he did it twice.

His lack of goals lately hasn’t been because of a lack of trying. In fact, he averaged five shots a game on their four-game road trip, and if it wasn’t for Kevin Lankinen, who made a spectacular glove save to deny Matthews of his 21st goal of the season over the weekend, we wouldn’t be talking about this drought right now as we head into the 4 Nations Faceoff break.

Although the goals have been hard to come by as of late, it’s nice to see the assists starting to pile up for the 27-year-old. With his five assists last week in three games, he extended his current point streak to four (seven assists in that span) and is now sitting at 25 assists on the season in 40 games, which is a 51-assist pace over an 82-game season.