TAMPA — Jeremy Williams would like to go from being a trivia question to part of the answer for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
To do so, the 24-year-old has to do more than just score, which is how he became part of an NHL trivia question. Williams needs to add a little more muscle to his 5-foot-11, 188-pound frame so he doesn't get knocked around so much, and he needs to shorten the gaps between his goals.
Leafs head coach Paul Maurice said — after first kvetching to reporters that they should just write about Williams scoring — that like many players with big shots, he is a streaky scorer. He had 18 goals in 49 games with the Leafs farm team, the Toronto Marlies, before he was called up this week, but with long stretches of silence between goals.
Then again, Williams can argue all he'd done since his first NHL game is score, which is why he is part of a nifty trivia question. Williams is the only player (as far as the Leafs know) to score in each of the three NHL games he played going back three seasons. He converted a feed from captain Mats Sundin in Wednesday's win over the Florida Panthers to make it three goals in three games in the past three seasons.
Related Information
- Florida Panthers
- Montreal Canadiens
- Tampa Bay Lightning
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Mats Sundin
- Jeremy Williams
"I'm fortunate to score in every game I played [in the NHL], but clearly it's not going to happen unless I've got someone watching over me," Williams said yesterday. "I have to skate. I can finish checks and try to be the energy guy. I can bring more than just scoring to the table, hopefully."
He could argue that no one brings that to the table more on a prorated basis than him. He could also say he does have someone watching over him, since Sundin assisted on his past two goals, the previous one coming in a win over the Montreal Canadiens late in the 2006-07 season.
In each of his three visits to the Leafs, Williams has played at least one shift with Sundin. Not bad for a kid from the family ranch in the tiny Saskatchewan hamlet of Candiac, not far from his official hometown of Glenavon, both of them strung along Highway 48 west of Regina.
"There's about eight people living there," Williams said when asked to describe Candiac. "I don't think it's classified as a town. There's no school, no store there, just a couple of streets and a church.
"All our mail is in Glenavon, which is I guess where I'm from."
There may be eight people living there, but Williams reports he had 32 text messages on his cellphone yesterday after his latest NHL goal. "They were all from friends back home congratulating me," he said. "I'm pretty sure my mom made sure everyone knew I was out there playing."
The first time he was called up by the Leafs, for a game in Pittsburgh during the 2005-06 season, Williams found it a daunting task just to sit beside Sundin. He said he was so nervous that "I was close to throwing up."
Williams played with Sundin over the final two periods of the Florida game, which is how he came to get the puck in front of the net for his goal. "I've never played with a player with so much awareness on the ice and a sense of what's happening no matter where he's looking or where he is," Williams said.
Williams's scoring feat is not in the NHL record book. The league does not keep such arcane statistics officially. As far as an unofficial scoring streak to lead off an NHL career, that is held by the Pittsburgh Penguins' Evgeny Malkin. He scored in the first six games of his career, but he did it all last season.
Then again, thanks to the Leafs' lack of success and two trades made on deadline day this week, it looks as if Williams will be around for more than one game this season. So he just might catch Malkin, beginning tonight against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Aside from improving his physical play, Williams could use a little more luck, which is another reason why he is still trying to establish an NHL career at the age of 24. When he was 16, a car accident left him with cracked vertebrae in his neck, which cost half a season, and a knee injury limited him to 23 games with the Marlies last season.
"Pieces of [his game] are there," Maurice said. "Now, it's how much he can get out of his game on a consistent basis that will allow me to put him on the ice."
