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It turns out all Philippe Myers needed to get to the NHL and stick around was to get some good advice.
The Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman was rewarded with a two-year extension worth an average of $850,000 per season, the club announced on Friday. After bouncing around between the NHL and the American Hockey League, Myers had an impressive training camp both on and off the ice, earning a spot on the club’s 23-man roster.
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He had to be patient, though. He only played in one game in the first two months of the season. During that time he had a conditioning stint with the Toronto Marlies, but he has been on an active NHL roster with the Leafs all season long.
Waiting couldn’t be easy, especially since the 27-year-old Myers had previously broken through at the NHL level with the Philadelphia Flyers, which included playing 44 out of 56 games with the club during a pandemic-shortened 2020-21 regular season.
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But the undrafted Myers persevered. Myers appears to have leapfrogged Conor Timmins in recent games as the club’s No. 6 defensive option playing in nine contests in December and Toronto’s first game of 2025, a 2-1 win against the New York Islanders.
So how did Myers do it?
It turns out the key for Myers is just keeping things simple.
Starting last season with the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL, head coach Joel Bouchard and defensive assistant coach Dan Jacob (now with the Laval Rocket) sat down with Myers and told him what it was going to take to stick in the NHL going forward.,
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“They told me that the way that if I was going to get back into the NHL it was just by playing simple and playing a hard physical game. I’m a big body. I’ve got a long stick. And they helped me a lot with that,” Myers told The Hockey News on Thursday.
During practices early in the season, both coaches were on Myers if he deviated from the plan.
It appears to have worked.
“I just kind of came to realize that, for me, when I try to over-complicate things, it doesn’t go so well. So keeping it simple is kind of my game,” Myers said. “Obviously when there’s a play to be made, you make it. But you’re not trying to look for, to try to do anything too fancy, right? So it’s keeping it simple and playing hard is a recipe for success.”
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The Maple Leafs were a perfect fit for that strategy, Spending most of his games playing with Morgan Rielly, Myers can stay back and keep things simple as Rielly jumps in for an offensive opportunity.
When looking at opportunities as a free agent this summer with his agent, Allain Roy, Toronto was attractive given the high-level talent up front, including Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares.
“He was like; ‘They’ve got the best forward group in the world, so just give them the puck. Don’t try to do too much. And that’s kind of been the mindset.”
When it comes to depth players in the NHL, a lot of it comes down to trust and Myers has earned that.
“We know when he gets that puck he’s going to make the simple play,” Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube said of Myers. “He’s been good around our net, boxing out on plays in our D-zone. He’s got to continue to do that. He doesn’t need to complicate the game.”
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