A Nyström method for the discretization of thermal layer potentials is proposed and analyzed. The method is based on considering the potentials as generalized Abel integral operators in time, where the kernel is a time dependent surface integral operator. The time discretization is the trapezoidal rule with a corrected weight at the endpoint to compensate for singularities of the integrand. The spatial discretization is a standard quadrature rule for surface integrals of smooth functions. We will discuss stability and convergence results of this discretization scheme for second-kind boundary integral equations of the heat equation. The method is explicit, does not require the computation of influence coefficients, and can be combined easily with recently developed fast heat solvers.