It’s a melancholy annual tradition during the Toronto Maple Leafs’ hiatus from second-round playoff hockey, which extended to 18 years with their Game 7 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning last Saturday: the players and management meet with media a few days later for an extended end-of season availability, during which they search for answers as to why they couldn’t get over the hump this time.

And there are subsets within the annual collection of year-end topics at these pressers. One of them: right winger William Nylander’s future with the team. He’s the sacrificial lamb typically mentioned on comment boards and call-in radio shows every time the fans want blood following a playoff disappointment. And he’s used to it at this point.

“My summer will be the same,” Nylander said Tuesday at the Ford Performance Centre. “That’s all I’ve heard since I’ve been here.”

But are the roars getting a bit louder this time? It used to be only the xenophobic Canadians, the Coach’s Corner holdovers, anti-Euro sentiment baked into their hockey upbringings, picking on Nylander. They’d ignore all the good and parse out every frame of footage showing a lackadaisical backcheck or too-fancy stickhandling in crucial situations, using it as evidence that Nylander had to go.

After six consecutive opening-round playoff exits, however? Even the pragmatists are starting to wonder if Nylander must be thrown overboard. And it’s not because of poor play. Quite the opposite. He had career highs with 34 goals and 80 points this season. With Nylander on the ice at 5-on-5, the Leafs were outscored this season but actually held a 55-percent edge in expected goals, so he was unlucky in that regard. He set career highs in shots and individual shot attempts per 60 at 5-on-5. He led the team in power-play points. He sat in the 97th percentile of all NHLers in takeaways per 60 to boot. Despite some down games in the Tampa series, he was also the Leafs’ best forward at times, named the top star of Game 5, during which he had three points.

But Nylander did all that at a relatively larcenous cap hit of $6.96 million – when compared to his ‘Core Four’ forward teammates Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner, whose AAVs clock in at $11.64 million, $11 million and $10.9 million, respectively.