Maple Leafs top pick William Nylander ready to lead Team Sweden

The first rule of swagger, in hockey at least, is not to put one's own under a microscope.

The big takeaway from a brief chat with William Nylander during the Toronto Maple Leafs pick's preparations for the world junior championship with Team Sweden is that the 18-year-old has it. The playmaker accepts the hacks and whacks he gets with MoDo in the Swedish Hockey League as the slings and arrows of having unlimited potential. The working over he's attracted with the Swedish club — which took the step of hiring 42-year-old former NHL tough guy Donald Brashear to provide on-ice cover — ought to have prepped Nylander for whatever coverage he attracts at the world junior, where Sweden will play out in the Air Canada Centre in front of Leafs fans. Nylander isn't calling his shot, though.

"It's hard to say," he said of his transition from league play to the world junior prior to Sunday night's Sweden-Canada pre-competition game in Ottawa. "But that's just the thing with hockey, there's always going to be hits and stuff that you can't avoid.

"I think my entire game has improved," added Nylander. "That's what you try to do every time you go on the ice. You don't want to get too focused on one thing. I've been working a lot off the ice, in the gym and and stuff like that. Small stuff off the ice."

It's tough to make projections when moving from one strata of hockey to a short tournament such as the WJC. The need to know is that it's unheard of for an 18-year-old forward in the SHL to score a point per game or log 19-plus minutes a night, as Nylander does for MoDo. The teen has also made a noticable physical progression, looking about two years older than the babyfaced kid the Leafs anointed as their bright young hope. It's clear having a stepping-stone senior circuit to play in, which is an avenue unavailable to his Canadian Hockey League contemporaries, has been great for augmenting Nylander's confidence.

"For me, the most important thing this year was to make sure I got a lot of ice time," Nylander said. "It has helped me improve. I don't know what would have happened if I stayed there [with the Leafs or AHL Toronto Marlies], so it's hard to say how it will work out.

"We'll see how it plays out in the future."

Nylander was too green to rate a spot on Team Sweden 12 months ago, when it ultimately won silver in Malmo after Nordic neigbour Finland won the final in overtime. He displayed his massive potential during the spring under-18s. Now he's cast as the main cog for Sweden, which is the closest thing the Toronto group has to a home team due to Nylander.

It happens that fast. Nylander is skating with his MoDo linemate, Los Angeles Kings first-rounder Adrian Kempe, while his other wing Oskar Lindblom (a Philadelphia Flyers fifth) was also his linemate in the U18s. Overall, the conditions would seem optimal for Nylander to have a big tournament in his future NHL homebase.

Sweden is on a run of silver-silver-gold at the WJC since 2012; it has a medal game for eight touranments running. The early word is that they might not be as formidable this year, but expectations usually have an expiry date about one period into the first game.

"It's going to be lots of fun," Nylander said. "I'm really looking forward to it, hopefully we can go there and perform our best. We have a really good team, if we perform the way we can every game, I think we have a chance."

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.