The Toronto Maple Leafs, down 2-1 in their series against the Boston Bruins, have struggled without a key player in their lineup who has been sidelined: William Nylander.
Nylander had been seen skating and practicing with the team before Game 3, as Leafs managers keep a tight lid on the star forward’s absence.
“There’s a chance (he plays),” Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said of Nylander before Game 3 on Wednesday. “Everything for him is how he responds and we’ll take it from there.”
Nylander himself, a full-participant at practice on Friday, told reporters, with a slight smile on his face, that “it’s just personal so I’m not going to get into that,” on the reason behind his absence.
The 27-year-old Swedish forward, who was second in scoring for the Leafs in the regular season, has reportedly been struggling with migraine, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
Migraine, experts told the Star, are not just an elevated headache, they can be debilitating, especially for high-performing athletes. Researchers refer to the condition singularly, as “migraine,” instead of “migraines” and characterize flare-ups as “migraine attacks.”
Dr. William Kingston, a headache neurologist at Sunnybrook Hospital, is a casual Leafs fan, mostly tuning in for playoff games. But, when reports of Nylander’s struggles with migraine surfaced, he began paying a bit more attention.
Migraine is a neurological disorder that affects about 12 to 15 per cent of the population, Kingston said, and severity varies greatly from person-to-person..
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