According to Paul Martin, co-founder of Box to Box Films, whose company produces the series, Nylander was one of the first players approached about appearing in it, going back to the NHL All-Star game in early February. The 28-year-old jumped at the chance and said he has no regrets.

“I grew up in Sweden watching documentaries about hockey and learning things about players and the games that I didn’t know,” Nylander said during the Amazon Prime press conference announcing the series on Monday. “I loved that stuff. So when I got the chance to be a part of it, I was all in.”

“It gives people a look behind the scenes with the players.”

Such as the seemingly heated exchange between Nylander and teammate Mitch Marner during the Maple Leafs’ first-round Stanley Cup series against the Bruins in April, during which Marner threw his gloves in the trash in frustration.

After telling Marner to “stop whining, bro,” a Nylander with a microphone told him to “just (bleep) shoot.”

The incident escalated into a full-blown controversy in Toronto, as hockey incidents often do. The irony: Minutes after the final whistle blew, cameras caught Nylander in the Maple Leafs’ locker room saying they had put it behind them.

“We are all friends here working for the same goal,” he said.

Nylander hopes that scenes like this will give fans a better understanding of their hockey heroes.

“I think everyone’s going to see a side of the players that they don’t see every day,” he told reporters. “The amount of preparation and sacrifice that goes into a full season and the playoffs really shows, but you also get a taste of what’s important to each of us off the ice.”

In Nylander’s case, it’s the longstanding friendship between him and Pastrnak, a friendship that dates back to when they first became teammates at Sodertalje Jr. in the Swedish junior league in 2012-13. Pastrnak, born in the Czech Republic, was a teenager at the time, and he credits Nylander with helping him acclimatize to a new country, language and culture when he first came to Sweden to develop his game.

“It was awesome,” Pastrnak told NHL.com last month during the NHL European Player Media Tour in Prague. “When I came to Sweden, he was obviously the star there, you know. And very, very, very talented.”

When he first arrived in Sweden, Pastrnak said he was playing a level below Nylander. That didn’t last long.

“He was way better than me back then,” Pastrnak said. “He was super cool. Then we met. My English wasn’t that great, of course, so we couldn’t talk much. But he was very helpful, he tried to help me every time with English, and Swedish and stuff.

“I ended up playing with him. We didn’t talk much at the time, of course, but we let our playing do the talking. And I think we became much closer friends then, when we started playing together and having fun.

“We had really good chemistry.”

More than a decade later, they’ve both become NHL stars for their respective teams. Given their relationship, Episode 1 is fittingly titled “Best of Rivals,” spotlighting the Bruins’ seven-game elimination of the Maple Leafs last spring.

When asked if there was anything he didn’t like about the episode, Nylander replied, “just the ending,” referring to his team’s loss to the Bruins.

Then he started to laugh broadly.

If the entire series resembles Episode 1, curious hockey fans will do the same.