The 2024–25 season is drawing near with regular season play just over a week away. While the Toronto Maple Leafs’ rivalry-fueled opening tilt in Montreal on Oct. 9 will surely be electric, fans can scratch that non-pre-season itch five days earlier on Oct. 4 when the new six-part docuseries, Faceoff: Inside the NHL, premiers on Amazon Prime Video.
The series will open with an episode focused on star Leafs forward William Nylander, but will be a tough watch for fans as it will go behind the scenes of their first-round series loss to the Boston Bruins (again).
What is Faceoff: Inside the NHL
This new show is not Amazon Prime Video’s first foray into the world of the NHL. The streaming platform has released a number of NHL documentaries including Saving Sakic, Tough Guy: The Bob Probert Story, Chosen One: Alexandre Daigle and, although Leafs fans would like to forget it, All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, a five part series that followed the 2020–21 Leafs season that iconicly ended with their first-round playoff defeat at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens. However Faceoff: Inside the NHL, produced by Box To Box Films and NHL Productions, is set to be a much different look into the NHL.
The series, which was filmed during the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, will follow 14 separate NHL players across nine NHL franchises. The players that will be showcased through the series include David Pastrnak and Jeremy Swayman from the Boston Bruins, Jack Eichel from the Vegas Golden Knights, Filip Forsberg from the Nashville Predators, Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks, Gabriel Landeskog of the Colorado Avalanche, Jacob Trouba from the New York Rangers, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman of the Edmonton Oilers, Matthew Tkachuk from the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers and, of course, William Nylander of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
On each respective player’s quest to achieve hockey’s greatest prize, the series will show their journeys both on and off the ice as they chase Stanley Cup glory. And from what we can tell from the recently released trailer, the series will have no shortage of intensity and emotion from the players involved.
The William Nylander Connection
Despite the Leafs, as per usual, hanging around for just one round of playoff action in 2024, the opening episode of the series titled “Best of Rivals”, will focus on the Leafs/Bruins rivalry and the 2024 seven game battle between the two, through the play and friendship of Nylander and David Pastrnak. The two European wingers have a close friendship that dates back to 2012–13 when they were teammates on Sodertalje Jr. in the Swedish junior league.
Now bright stars on their respective teams, the two have battled it out on three separate occasions in the playoffs with the most recent matchup occurring this past post-season, where the Bruins, as per usual, beat the Leafs in seven games. Needless to say, the two old buddies have had to put their friendship aside on multiple occasions.
While the episode may make Leafs fans a little bitter given that it will ultimately result in reliving yet another first-round exit to the Bruins, fans can rest easy knowing that they will, at the very least, get to see a deep dive into one of their brightest stars mentality and actions when the games matter most, as well as his interactions and discourse with other NHL stars, including the aforementioned Pastrnak. And let’s be real, Leaf Nation will be eating this show up regardless of the Leafs’ playoff blunder.
From what we can see in the trailer, one thing the opening episode will definitely show is the intensity and confidence that Nylander brings to the game, with multiple moments of the trailer capturing that. “If we don’t get the cup, it doesn’t matter who moves on from the first round,” says Nylander in one instance.
Then, in a mic’d up moment featured from the series with Boston, Nylander tells a teammate to “shoot the puck” and “stop crying, bro.” This intensity is capped off in the final scene of the trailer in which Nylander is asked by the interviewer if he thrives under pressure. “Of course,” Nylander says with a smug grin.
The series’ upcoming first episode may not feature the Cup run that Leafs fans were hoping they would witness last postseason but there are still some aspects for fans to look forward to apart from getting a deep dive into the bloody battle that is the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Seeing the 28-year-old Nylander, a bright star in Toronto, who also put up a respectable three goals in last year’s first-round battle, put his playoff intensity on full display is sure to get the Toronto faithful hyped up, and with the regular-season fast approaching, this will only add to the anticipation, and belief in this Leafs core that features Nylander as one of its finest pieces.
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