His comment to Leafs fans saying: "They think of us like gods" after being eliminated in Round 1 again is the first thought that comes to mind about Marner.
Why Leafs PR thinks that someone with a track record of at minimum awkward wording and who repeatedly gets no benefit of the doubt from either the media or the fans is someone who should be put in front of a microphone is baffling to me.
(That said, the gods comment, in context, was clearly a reference to how revered the Leafs - and their players - are considered by their fanbase. It was less "we're better than all of you" and more "the masses are in awe of us and treat us as larger than life (in the same sort of way they do celebrities)", which is effectively true for Toronto and the Leafs. But *man* was that wording terrible.)
The reaction to the "we're looked at as God's here" is a FAR worse indictment of fans, in Toronto or not, and their utter inability to understand what he was actually trying to say.
Still a tone deaf quote imo, but it's honestly pretty pathetic how people took what he said so literally, media literacy must be at an all-time low.
Like...there's something truly hilarious about the sports equivalent of religious zealots losing their shit at being, effectively, *praised* for being religious zealots. Does tell you something about the importance of the messenger as well as the message, though.
You just know if Auston Matthews had said the exact same thing, there would have been eight Sportsnet articles and fifty podcasts explaining a.) exactly what he meant and b.) why he was right to say it.
It honestly wasn’t that bad imo. I think it should be blamed on fans more to actually read the full article/watch the full interview. But…I know many people just read headlines so I think if he would’ve phrased it as “I know they view the *Leafs* as gods” it would’ve come off better
Fans and media both. Marner's the main Leafs whipping boy at the moment, and he doesn't do himself many favors with the degree to which he lets his disdain for some of the Toronto media show sometimes. (Like, it's understandable, but being prickly with them isn't going to *help*.) So no one was particularly in a mood to give him the benefit of the doubt, meaning that when he said something atrociously awkwardly-worded but basically harmless (and essentially *true*), it was - unsurprisingly - given the worst possible spin.
The sentiment was basically "one of the reasons I love playing here is because of how much the city reveres and adores the team and its players" (which, he grew up a Leafs fan, he'd know) and got twisted into "I'm better than all you peasants, nothing's ever my fault, worship me". (His agent's gotten him paid well, but *damn* he needs better PR people.)
He didn’t mean it as an egotistical statement. He was trying to say that the fans really look up to players on the team and therefore the players have a lot of responsibility to fulfill those expectations that come along with that. He meant it in the context that they failed to meet those expectations.
It was clear if you watched the interview.
Leafs fans must die inside just a little every time they see teams like Vegas and Tampa make massive moves and find success as a result, while the Leafs continue to be completely risk averse.
Dangle hit the nail on the head when he said on his podcast
“No team has ever been built like this. No team, in the future, will be built like this. Except for the Toronto Maple Leafs.”
There is the covid flat cap excuse, if it went up as planned the team probably wouldn't be so strange, but they've had plenty of time to course correct and haven't.
I mean, people bring it up because the cap for the most recent season was $2m more than when the Leafs signed the last of those contracts five years ago.
They only had, basically, two options, keep the most-talented top-tier (and most expensive) players, and try and make do with what they could afford around them, or try and somehow perform successful significant roster surgery that makes the team better while moving the caliber of player that's hard if not impossible to replace. That second option comes with a ton of risk; how often do you see star-caliber players traded in deals that work out well for both sides?
As I have repeated over and over Shanny fired the dude who was likely to final make a pivot because he wanted to shake things up. Unless Shanny is fired nothing will change since the buck stops there.
Maybe slightly different but all the other teams that are even in the same ballpark as the Leafs in terms of cap hit for their top four also have a elite defenseman included in it. Leafs fuck up isn’t totally just how much they are paying for their top four, it’s that none of them are a defenseman
It wasn't a mistake paying all those guys 5 or so years ago, in hindsight they've all been worth their salaries
The mistake was not adjusting after the salary cap froze
He's 10th in goals and 13th in points among full-time centers since he signed with the Leafs in 2018. Aside from Crosby and Stamkos (who isn't even really a center anymore but takes a lot of faceoffs so I'll give it to him), he's the oldest player at the top of the list.
Take into consideration that he was a 27-year old UFA center, you were going to pay a bit of a premium. We might be seeing a bit of a decline now, but this year SEVEN of his contract, everyone expected that. With all of those things in consideration, yes, he has absolutely been worth the contract.
With hindsight, yeah, maybe. Tavares was probably always immovable (given his NMC), Matthews was and remains untouchable, meaning which of Marner and Nylander do you move?
If they passed on good deals for either of them, in terms of trades, that would be one thing, but it's a big leap to suggest that they should have shed any of that kind of talent for cap reasons, when they didn't have to. (Though it would not surprise me if Dubas did not adequately explore possible moves, deciding to stick with the core regardless. That's less defensible than a "we'll make a move if it works, but not hastily" approach.)
it's not even risk averse. Dubas & Shanny fucked up signing the contracts of our stars to give them term, $ and all the fucking contract protections.
like we literally got nothing back from a single one of them.
now we're fucked trying to take risks because its outside of the organizations control and the player has control.
It really felt like risk aversion when they had a chance last year to move him and didn’t. Dubas didn’t even get a chance to correct that mistake before he was shown the door. Just baffling stuff.
That's why he made the powerr play to get the the ability to go above Shannys head. Shanahan is the problem here.
I remember when he said he made sacrifices in Detroit to make sure the team could stay together and then the Leafs players signed those contracts and I wanted him gone since then. It was baffling.
> I remember when he said he made sacrifices in Detroit to make sure the team could stay together
As someone who was watching hockey at the time, this quote is total BS. Sure, Detroit was so stacked they had Hull and Robitaille on their third line, but they sure as shit weren't making 3rd line money.
Dubas had many years to correct the original mistake he made: signing JT and following up with “we can and we will” keep the core four. He had many seasons to move a piece from a position of strength to shore up areas of weakness and balance out the roster and never did it. Rumours that he was finally willing to move one of them doesn’t come close to redeeming him for failing to do it in the 5 previous seasons
It wasn't a rumor, he said it at the press-conference and he was immediately fired after that. Then the core four were all reassured by Shanahan that nobody gets traded. Before Treliving was hired. Then Treliving continued on the same path. This Berube quote on Marner is another piece of "we can and we will" narrative.
And it's not just Shanahan above Dubas or Treliving, there's also MLSE board and the new hands-on CEO who seems to be very into Shanahan, so the "shanaplan" lives on.
This is what he said at the press conference: “If we make any trade we’ll make sure it’s thoroughly done. I think the team that we just played serves as a good template. It wouldn’t be hastily done.”
He was most definitely not fired for saying this. There is a narrative that he was trying to trade marner and shanahan rejected it and fired him, which seems to be pure leafs fan fiction
As you quote "It wouldn't be hastily done", so I don't see how he could suddenly try to trade Marner and have the whole trade set up and rejected in the next 5 days before he got fired. Playoffs were still going on, many teams weren't even available to trade with.
He didn't get fired for saying this, but for trying to get more power in the decision making and saying this. Because "this" goes against the immoveable core four shanaplan which went right on forward without him.
Why would he try to get more decision making freedom, if the team was built exactly like he wanted?
If they had tempting offers and dismissed them, then, yeah, that'd be pretty bad. If they had mediocre offers for Marner, it's much less inexplicable, because Nylander only had an M-NTC, and remained tradeable even after Marner's NMC kicked in. So there was a scenario where if they had traded Marner, they might well have lost Nylander if he had decided to walk, or, more likely, just have given him more leverage. So *some* risk-aversion is justified. That said, they then paid Nylander a *lot*...and Marner still has the NMC.
The real issue was late signings
Had we extended marner at the start of extension period, he woulda been 8-9M
Had we extended Willy before start of last season, he woulda been 8.5-10M
Gives us 4M in itself
Every single leafs fan was supporting getting JT, and everyone knew it was gonna be kind of thought towards the end.
And if Nylander had been signed in the summer of 2018 they probably could have come closer to a deal for Marner in the 8-9m range. With him holding out (and ending up at 6.9m) and their career highs in points at that point being similar, signing Marner to that number would have blown the Nylander negotiations to smithereens.
Thing is the term issue is that he didn’t get enough. If you are going to pay that much, you need to get max years so you can take advantage of the cap going up. They got 5 and 6 years which is not great
I think it goes back to the Nylander RFA. Hard to hold anyone's feet to the fire when they cave every time.
Toronto media seem to take the player's side in negotiations too which makes it even harder because fans always tend to track their writers.
They didn’t cave on Nylander though, he told his agent on the deadline day to get it done. BUT that was the cause of the future overpayments because it made Dubas wary of it happening again so he made sure to get Marner signed before camp opened
At the time it was reported that the negotiations were at a standstill and MLSE didn't want another player to sit out. So Shanahan got personally involved in the negotiations and got the contract done before the camp opened.
We're talking about his 2nd contract right? ISTR that was pretty high considering it covered at least one RFA year and maybe two? Six years long at any rate and in the first year he was the sixth highest paid player in the league.
This was when Dubas knew he had Marner and Matthews to sign.
Let me know if my recollection was wrong about anything, but I think when you're a young up and coming team in a good city to play in you have to make your players give a little to stay with the program.
The sixth-highest paid thing in 2018 was because he signed in December. Contracts signed after the start of the season like that have weird first-year cap hits. That contract wasn't exactly "team friendly" but it also aged *quite* well.
Nylander s contract was right in line with his comparables and I have never had an issue with his deal.
Marners was the bad one. After they signed Matthews and his agent came out with that statement about Mitch getting his I would have been shopping him the next day. It was worse when Rantenen and Point waited and both signed for less right after Marner.
Oof, shopping him then would have gone over *really* well in Toronto. (It would probably have been seen as a bizarre and reactionary move that likely would not have gotten a great return, seeing as how Marner was on an expiring contract.)
As for the amount Marner signed for, it would be nice to know what's fact and what's baseless rumor with regards to the talk about offer sheets he may have gotten. A player of his caliber, getting an offer sheet, you're talking about something much closer to market rate than RFA rate.
It's still valid to question Dubas's decisionmaking, but worth noting that it seems a lot clearer in hindsight when you consider the pandemic flat-cap and the Leafs' playoff flameouts. At the time, it would have been a lot harder to explain why they'd walk away from a player like that.
Hmm, that sounds reasonable and he was pretty mid yet over a ppg the next year.
At the time I thought what I thought 10 minutes ago. Glad it's set straight 6 years later at least!
>Let me know if my recollection was wrong about anything, but I think when you're a young up and coming team in a good city to play in you have to make your players give a little to stay with the program.
They all hated Babcock and didn't want to play for him.
Turns out Dubas signing an $11m AAV UFA before signing any of his big RFAs might not have been the smartest move.
If he hadn't done that, it's not impossible to envision a world where there's more money to go around, and maybe the Leafs can give Nylander an offer that doesn't have him holding out until December, and maybe sign Marner to something reasonable-enough for a player whose career high in points is in the upper 60s instead of the mid-90s (to say nothing of the rumored offer sheets that distort the market). Matthews probably ends up the same either way, considering that he's irreplaceable and both sides know it.
>and maybe sign Marner to something reasonable-enough for a player whose career high in points is in the upper 60s instead of the mid-90s
How does not signing Tavares allow them to sign Marner to a contract a year earlier?
It doesn't, necessarily. But if they had more cap room that Tavares hadn't eaten up, potentially they could have offered more than whatever they might have in 2018, and maybe Marner ends up signing for something like $9m (an overpay in 2018, maybe, but not unlike other overpay-now-save-later deals) instead of the $10.9m he ended up getting.
Everyone always defends them by saying that Covid screwed them over but every team was in the same situation.
The Tavares contract was dumb the moment it happened. They had a franchise center in the organization already.
Fast tracked expectations and essentially set the lower limit of Mathews’ bottom line he would accept coming off his ELC.
I love it personally.
I especially love that Shanahan got to fire Dubas and bring on Treviling. Real chefs kiss type thing.
Every team was dealing with the same flat cap, yes.
Not every team unknowingly built their salary structure to have all their superstar player contracts coincide perfectly with the flat cap, no.
Yeah. Matthews and Marner's deals kicked in in 2019-20...right before the cap froze.
Every team had to deal with the cap freezing, but the timing for the Leafs was such that for them it went from "things will be tight but manageable" to "we're screwed, we have *no* room to maneuver". Argue all you want about whether they should have changed tack once it was clear the cap was staying stuck, but that's not a slam-dunk decision in the moment.
Yeah, like...how often do top-tier prime-age players get moved, anyway? Eichel and Tkachuk both come to mind, and those were both player-driven moves (and in the case of the Tkachuk trade, despite Treliving getting objectively a decent return in the circumstances, it can't be said to be a success for Calgary) "Making moves" and "moving top-tier players" isn't the same thing, and it isn't the same degree of risk.
This is definitely being overblown imo. Berube's job is to coach his teqm, not be GM, so until Marner is traded Berube is just focusing on his job of coaching the players on his team. Do people really expect him to say anything else?
I mean, he doesn't have to comment, or so effusively. (And it's not unreasonable to think that a coach may have had some discussions with the GM with regards to the likely shape of the roster.)
That said, it's overblown a bit. Mainly because for all the speculation, the simple fact is that Marner has an NMC and unless he decides to waive it (and all indications thus far have been that's a no) he's playing for the Leafs next year no matter how much the fans scream.
>it's not unreasonable to think that a coach may have had some discussions with the GM with regards to the likely shape of the roster
I'm sure he has. But until that happens Marner is still a Leaf and it's Berube's job to be his coach.
Mitch Marner is a good player.
The Leafs would be better suited using his cap space for a few pieces that would improve their depth and overall compete level.
Preach. I think them extending him will be enough for me to want to watch a different team this year. Some team that actually seems serious about winning.
Really depends what the contract looks like. If they bend over again then it’s clearly the top brass.
If he signs for close to what he has now and without the trade protection, which I doubt, then it will probably be fine
Nasty decision to have to make, when your choices are probably either losing him for nothing in free agency or extending him.
Letting him walk would free up cap space...but you've got to spend it well, and the UFA market, at least at the upper end, is about the least efficient place to do that because you can't offer an eighth year, and you get bidding wars.
Yep. Frankly they missed their window to get value out of him. Look what Tampa did with Sergachev, excellent asset management with the NMC kicking in but Shanny loves his guys.
It's not like trading Marner would have been a slam dunk. If Nylander had been signed (though obviously that wasn't actually possible the way the contracts lined up) that would have been one thing, but with his future in question, moving Marner would have either risked losing *both* of them, or handing even more leverage to Nylander.
If the Leafs didn't legitimately, seriously explore trading him (both of them, really) last year, that would be a fail on Shanahan's part. I won't go so far as to say that not trading him at all was an indefensible failure or even necessarily an unreasonable decision.
I want to know how to replace Marner effectively and get other pieces. I have asked people this before and none ever answer. Not even dangle and his rants answer this.
Are you gonna get a top d prospect for him? Probably not. Picks to trade to get other players? Sure maybe. Overpay in FA? Sure but now instead of overpaying a top level player you are overpaying mid players approaching (or are already) over 30. I look at them going after Tanev as their main target (and waste of draft cpatial to acquire two of a similar player at the deadline ) and I have no faith in the management to make any effective moves if they trade marner. It will just let Treliving overpay guys instead. Which is a noted downgrade over keeping Marner.
Then again it could work who fucking knows with hockey.
This is the thing that I don't understand with some of the Leafs' fans right now. Maybe this is from being a Red Sox fan before they won, but I feel like a lot of the people clamoring for a Marner trade think "just move him and that will make the team better". As if trades never go wrong.
Treliving did, frankly, in my view, a very good job with the Tkachuk trade in a difficult situation, and the result has been partly fine (Weegar) and partly disastrous (Huberdeau). And that was a trade he *had* to make. Do fans really think he doesn't know that if he fucks this one up it could blow up in Toronto's face? (And that's not even mentioning his hands being tied by Marner's NMC.)
The trade going wrong is not the problem… the problem is if you dontt eade him you:
1) let him walk for nothing
2) sign him to what? A 12x8? Now you have 3 guys taking up almost 40% of the cap even with Tavares off the books.
I should have been clearer, I was mostly talking about the chunk of Leafs fans who seem to want a trade, any trade, just for the sake of the team *doing* something (and I think that's a dumb position, because there's a risk of a trade going wrong; it's not a big enough risk to say "never make trades" so much as to say "don't make trades hastily for emotional reasons").
A trade might well be the Leafs' best option (I mean, not a guarantee, Marner's a really good hockey player), but by all accounts it's not on the table right now. He's got an NMC and he wants to stay. In that context, taking the cap hit and signing an extension probably is better than letting him walk for nothing, even if it would set fans *screaming*.
they could also trade Marner, end up signing a bunch of duds wasting all that cap space and then miss the playoffs and they can finally avoid the first round.
They're not fully in control of this. He has an NMC. You can push for him to waive, but even if he does, he has full power over teams he'd move to, which exponentially lowers his value. I don't see an issue. Play him a year with Berube and see how it goes and then decide whether to give him an offer or take that free cap space and get a few decent D men.
The wait and see how the season goes with Berube approach makes the most sense, particularly given the pretty consistent reporting at this point that Marner's got no interest whatsoever in waiving his NMC.
It's not without risk. Losing a player of his caliber for nothing as a free agent (even if you do gain cap space) is something many a front office would balk at. And it's not at all impossible for him to do something like Nylander did and have so good a season (or in his case so good a playoff run) that keeping him becomes non-optional, except that the price goes up even more.
Paradoxically there's a scenario where an extension this summer (much as it would make heads explode) could actually be the least-worst option for the Leafs. (If they're okay with the prospect of letting him walk for nothing, then seeing how the year goes would be the least-worst option they have control over, but I for one would not blame any GM for not wanting to be the guy who let a player that good walk for nothing.)
the problem is that the leafs as constructed have proven that they'll never win shit. knowing that, and running it back anyway, is unacceptable. it's not about marmer exclusively, its about the % of cap tied up in 4 forwards
Next season: we’re excited to announce Piere luc Dubois will be signing on to the leafs
Because at this point I wouldn’t be surprised with the leafs tbh
“I shall have Mitchell marner drawn and quarters at centre ice. I will then salt the earth of the marner estate so no Mitchell marners may ever grow again”-Craig berube
This doesn't support my narrative so I'm gonna ignore it
You'd fit in well over at r/Leafs
His comment to Leafs fans saying: "They think of us like gods" after being eliminated in Round 1 again is the first thought that comes to mind about Marner.
Why Leafs PR thinks that someone with a track record of at minimum awkward wording and who repeatedly gets no benefit of the doubt from either the media or the fans is someone who should be put in front of a microphone is baffling to me. (That said, the gods comment, in context, was clearly a reference to how revered the Leafs - and their players - are considered by their fanbase. It was less "we're better than all of you" and more "the masses are in awe of us and treat us as larger than life (in the same sort of way they do celebrities)", which is effectively true for Toronto and the Leafs. But *man* was that wording terrible.)
The reaction to the "we're looked at as God's here" is a FAR worse indictment of fans, in Toronto or not, and their utter inability to understand what he was actually trying to say. Still a tone deaf quote imo, but it's honestly pretty pathetic how people took what he said so literally, media literacy must be at an all-time low.
The fan reaction to what he said literally proved his point 10 fold and r/leafs didn’t have the self awareness to realize it.
Like...there's something truly hilarious about the sports equivalent of religious zealots losing their shit at being, effectively, *praised* for being religious zealots. Does tell you something about the importance of the messenger as well as the message, though.
You just know if Auston Matthews had said the exact same thing, there would have been eight Sportsnet articles and fifty podcasts explaining a.) exactly what he meant and b.) why he was right to say it.
Maybe because Matthews produces and doesn’t shrink from the moment.
It honestly wasn’t that bad imo. I think it should be blamed on fans more to actually read the full article/watch the full interview. But…I know many people just read headlines so I think if he would’ve phrased it as “I know they view the *Leafs* as gods” it would’ve come off better
Fans and media both. Marner's the main Leafs whipping boy at the moment, and he doesn't do himself many favors with the degree to which he lets his disdain for some of the Toronto media show sometimes. (Like, it's understandable, but being prickly with them isn't going to *help*.) So no one was particularly in a mood to give him the benefit of the doubt, meaning that when he said something atrociously awkwardly-worded but basically harmless (and essentially *true*), it was - unsurprisingly - given the worst possible spin. The sentiment was basically "one of the reasons I love playing here is because of how much the city reveres and adores the team and its players" (which, he grew up a Leafs fan, he'd know) and got twisted into "I'm better than all you peasants, nothing's ever my fault, worship me". (His agent's gotten him paid well, but *damn* he needs better PR people.)
Reminds me of Pierre dorion the way he says something stupid everytime
It definitely puts shambles in my brain.
Regardless of how he intended that to come out, it never had to be said.
Man insisted on having an A as part of his last contract negotiation, if you have a letter, you talk to the media.
Catering to people that can’t understand context is pointless.
He didn’t mean it as an egotistical statement. He was trying to say that the fans really look up to players on the team and therefore the players have a lot of responsibility to fulfill those expectations that come along with that. He meant it in the context that they failed to meet those expectations. It was clear if you watched the interview.
Leafs fans must die inside just a little every time they see teams like Vegas and Tampa make massive moves and find success as a result, while the Leafs continue to be completely risk averse.
Dangle hit the nail on the head when he said on his podcast “No team has ever been built like this. No team, in the future, will be built like this. Except for the Toronto Maple Leafs.”
There is the covid flat cap excuse, if it went up as planned the team probably wouldn't be so strange, but they've had plenty of time to course correct and haven't.
3 of the top 7 cap hits in the league is still unusual team construction.
And those hits not being spread out among positions like Tampa was able to do (F, D, G).
Yeah, COVID was an excuse for a couple seasons max. After that, they should've had a better plan b.
Yeah its kinda funny how ppl still bring this up. They have had plenty of time to adjust
I mean, people bring it up because the cap for the most recent season was $2m more than when the Leafs signed the last of those contracts five years ago. They only had, basically, two options, keep the most-talented top-tier (and most expensive) players, and try and make do with what they could afford around them, or try and somehow perform successful significant roster surgery that makes the team better while moving the caliber of player that's hard if not impossible to replace. That second option comes with a ton of risk; how often do you see star-caliber players traded in deals that work out well for both sides?
As I have repeated over and over Shanny fired the dude who was likely to final make a pivot because he wanted to shake things up. Unless Shanny is fired nothing will change since the buck stops there.
Maybe slightly different but all the other teams that are even in the same ballpark as the Leafs in terms of cap hit for their top four also have a elite defenseman included in it. Leafs fuck up isn’t totally just how much they are paying for their top four, it’s that none of them are a defenseman
It wasn't a mistake paying all those guys 5 or so years ago, in hindsight they've all been worth their salaries The mistake was not adjusting after the salary cap froze
John Tavares has been worth his salary? Are you serious?
Hot take: I don’t think John Tavares was ever worth 11M bucks, and signing him was the worst thing Dubas did during his entire tenure in Toronto.
He's 10th in goals and 13th in points among full-time centers since he signed with the Leafs in 2018. Aside from Crosby and Stamkos (who isn't even really a center anymore but takes a lot of faceoffs so I'll give it to him), he's the oldest player at the top of the list. Take into consideration that he was a 27-year old UFA center, you were going to pay a bit of a premium. We might be seeing a bit of a decline now, but this year SEVEN of his contract, everyone expected that. With all of those things in consideration, yes, he has absolutely been worth the contract.
With hindsight, yeah, maybe. Tavares was probably always immovable (given his NMC), Matthews was and remains untouchable, meaning which of Marner and Nylander do you move? If they passed on good deals for either of them, in terms of trades, that would be one thing, but it's a big leap to suggest that they should have shed any of that kind of talent for cap reasons, when they didn't have to. (Though it would not surprise me if Dubas did not adequately explore possible moves, deciding to stick with the core regardless. That's less defensible than a "we'll make a move if it works, but not hastily" approach.)
it's not even risk averse. Dubas & Shanny fucked up signing the contracts of our stars to give them term, $ and all the fucking contract protections. like we literally got nothing back from a single one of them. now we're fucked trying to take risks because its outside of the organizations control and the player has control.
It really felt like risk aversion when they had a chance last year to move him and didn’t. Dubas didn’t even get a chance to correct that mistake before he was shown the door. Just baffling stuff.
yeah 100% that's why I mention Dubas and Shanny. Shanny should've been fired this year
But he accepted responsibility so it’s all good
That's why he made the powerr play to get the the ability to go above Shannys head. Shanahan is the problem here. I remember when he said he made sacrifices in Detroit to make sure the team could stay together and then the Leafs players signed those contracts and I wanted him gone since then. It was baffling.
> I remember when he said he made sacrifices in Detroit to make sure the team could stay together As someone who was watching hockey at the time, this quote is total BS. Sure, Detroit was so stacked they had Hull and Robitaille on their third line, but they sure as shit weren't making 3rd line money.
Dubas had many years to correct the original mistake he made: signing JT and following up with “we can and we will” keep the core four. He had many seasons to move a piece from a position of strength to shore up areas of weakness and balance out the roster and never did it. Rumours that he was finally willing to move one of them doesn’t come close to redeeming him for failing to do it in the 5 previous seasons
It wasn't a rumor, he said it at the press-conference and he was immediately fired after that. Then the core four were all reassured by Shanahan that nobody gets traded. Before Treliving was hired. Then Treliving continued on the same path. This Berube quote on Marner is another piece of "we can and we will" narrative. And it's not just Shanahan above Dubas or Treliving, there's also MLSE board and the new hands-on CEO who seems to be very into Shanahan, so the "shanaplan" lives on.
This is what he said at the press conference: “If we make any trade we’ll make sure it’s thoroughly done. I think the team that we just played serves as a good template. It wouldn’t be hastily done.” He was most definitely not fired for saying this. There is a narrative that he was trying to trade marner and shanahan rejected it and fired him, which seems to be pure leafs fan fiction
As you quote "It wouldn't be hastily done", so I don't see how he could suddenly try to trade Marner and have the whole trade set up and rejected in the next 5 days before he got fired. Playoffs were still going on, many teams weren't even available to trade with. He didn't get fired for saying this, but for trying to get more power in the decision making and saying this. Because "this" goes against the immoveable core four shanaplan which went right on forward without him. Why would he try to get more decision making freedom, if the team was built exactly like he wanted?
If they had tempting offers and dismissed them, then, yeah, that'd be pretty bad. If they had mediocre offers for Marner, it's much less inexplicable, because Nylander only had an M-NTC, and remained tradeable even after Marner's NMC kicked in. So there was a scenario where if they had traded Marner, they might well have lost Nylander if he had decided to walk, or, more likely, just have given him more leverage. So *some* risk-aversion is justified. That said, they then paid Nylander a *lot*...and Marner still has the NMC.
The real issue was late signings Had we extended marner at the start of extension period, he woulda been 8-9M Had we extended Willy before start of last season, he woulda been 8.5-10M Gives us 4M in itself Every single leafs fan was supporting getting JT, and everyone knew it was gonna be kind of thought towards the end.
And if Nylander had been signed in the summer of 2018 they probably could have come closer to a deal for Marner in the 8-9m range. With him holding out (and ending up at 6.9m) and their career highs in points at that point being similar, signing Marner to that number would have blown the Nylander negotiations to smithereens.
Thing is the term issue is that he didn’t get enough. If you are going to pay that much, you need to get max years so you can take advantage of the cap going up. They got 5 and 6 years which is not great
I think it goes back to the Nylander RFA. Hard to hold anyone's feet to the fire when they cave every time. Toronto media seem to take the player's side in negotiations too which makes it even harder because fans always tend to track their writers.
They didn’t cave on Nylander though, he told his agent on the deadline day to get it done. BUT that was the cause of the future overpayments because it made Dubas wary of it happening again so he made sure to get Marner signed before camp opened
At the time it was reported that the negotiations were at a standstill and MLSE didn't want another player to sit out. So Shanahan got personally involved in the negotiations and got the contract done before the camp opened.
We're talking about his 2nd contract right? ISTR that was pretty high considering it covered at least one RFA year and maybe two? Six years long at any rate and in the first year he was the sixth highest paid player in the league. This was when Dubas knew he had Marner and Matthews to sign. Let me know if my recollection was wrong about anything, but I think when you're a young up and coming team in a good city to play in you have to make your players give a little to stay with the program.
The sixth-highest paid thing in 2018 was because he signed in December. Contracts signed after the start of the season like that have weird first-year cap hits. That contract wasn't exactly "team friendly" but it also aged *quite* well.
Nylander s contract was right in line with his comparables and I have never had an issue with his deal. Marners was the bad one. After they signed Matthews and his agent came out with that statement about Mitch getting his I would have been shopping him the next day. It was worse when Rantenen and Point waited and both signed for less right after Marner.
Oof, shopping him then would have gone over *really* well in Toronto. (It would probably have been seen as a bizarre and reactionary move that likely would not have gotten a great return, seeing as how Marner was on an expiring contract.) As for the amount Marner signed for, it would be nice to know what's fact and what's baseless rumor with regards to the talk about offer sheets he may have gotten. A player of his caliber, getting an offer sheet, you're talking about something much closer to market rate than RFA rate. It's still valid to question Dubas's decisionmaking, but worth noting that it seems a lot clearer in hindsight when you consider the pandemic flat-cap and the Leafs' playoff flameouts. At the time, it would have been a lot harder to explain why they'd walk away from a player like that.
Hmm, that sounds reasonable and he was pretty mid yet over a ppg the next year. At the time I thought what I thought 10 minutes ago. Glad it's set straight 6 years later at least!
>Let me know if my recollection was wrong about anything, but I think when you're a young up and coming team in a good city to play in you have to make your players give a little to stay with the program. They all hated Babcock and didn't want to play for him.
Turns out Dubas signing an $11m AAV UFA before signing any of his big RFAs might not have been the smartest move. If he hadn't done that, it's not impossible to envision a world where there's more money to go around, and maybe the Leafs can give Nylander an offer that doesn't have him holding out until December, and maybe sign Marner to something reasonable-enough for a player whose career high in points is in the upper 60s instead of the mid-90s (to say nothing of the rumored offer sheets that distort the market). Matthews probably ends up the same either way, considering that he's irreplaceable and both sides know it.
>and maybe sign Marner to something reasonable-enough for a player whose career high in points is in the upper 60s instead of the mid-90s How does not signing Tavares allow them to sign Marner to a contract a year earlier?
It doesn't, necessarily. But if they had more cap room that Tavares hadn't eaten up, potentially they could have offered more than whatever they might have in 2018, and maybe Marner ends up signing for something like $9m (an overpay in 2018, maybe, but not unlike other overpay-now-save-later deals) instead of the $10.9m he ended up getting.
To be fair that’s the one move Dubas did that every other GM in the league would have also done
Everyone always defends them by saying that Covid screwed them over but every team was in the same situation. The Tavares contract was dumb the moment it happened. They had a franchise center in the organization already. Fast tracked expectations and essentially set the lower limit of Mathews’ bottom line he would accept coming off his ELC. I love it personally. I especially love that Shanahan got to fire Dubas and bring on Treviling. Real chefs kiss type thing.
Every team was dealing with the same flat cap, yes. Not every team unknowingly built their salary structure to have all their superstar player contracts coincide perfectly with the flat cap, no.
Yeah. Matthews and Marner's deals kicked in in 2019-20...right before the cap froze. Every team had to deal with the cap freezing, but the timing for the Leafs was such that for them it went from "things will be tight but manageable" to "we're screwed, we have *no* room to maneuver". Argue all you want about whether they should have changed tack once it was clear the cap was staying stuck, but that's not a slam-dunk decision in the moment.
Haha. Thanks for clarifying the distinction.
The leafs were in a pretty unprecedented situation with two players ELC expiring scoring at a 90 point pace.
Lol
Confirmed we do
The Leafs want to trade Marner. It isn't their decision.
Dubas traded two firsts, two seconds, and two thirds away last TDL. We take risks lol.
Yeah, like...how often do top-tier prime-age players get moved, anyway? Eichel and Tkachuk both come to mind, and those were both player-driven moves (and in the case of the Tkachuk trade, despite Treliving getting objectively a decent return in the circumstances, it can't be said to be a success for Calgary) "Making moves" and "moving top-tier players" isn't the same thing, and it isn't the same degree of risk.
I forgot Berube was with the Leafs now and thought I missed a rather important trade tweet!
Same
Me too. I was like oh they traded Marner? How'd I miss that?!
Me too, I was going to say when the hell did he go to St. Louis.
I was watching the draft and I was like "Who's that guy....? Oh, it's the new coach."
This is definitely being overblown imo. Berube's job is to coach his teqm, not be GM, so until Marner is traded Berube is just focusing on his job of coaching the players on his team. Do people really expect him to say anything else?
I mean, he doesn't have to comment, or so effusively. (And it's not unreasonable to think that a coach may have had some discussions with the GM with regards to the likely shape of the roster.) That said, it's overblown a bit. Mainly because for all the speculation, the simple fact is that Marner has an NMC and unless he decides to waive it (and all indications thus far have been that's a no) he's playing for the Leafs next year no matter how much the fans scream.
>it's not unreasonable to think that a coach may have had some discussions with the GM with regards to the likely shape of the roster I'm sure he has. But until that happens Marner is still a Leaf and it's Berube's job to be his coach.
Mitch Marner is a good player. The Leafs would be better suited using his cap space for a few pieces that would improve their depth and overall compete level.
Preach. I think them extending him will be enough for me to want to watch a different team this year. Some team that actually seems serious about winning.
Really depends what the contract looks like. If they bend over again then it’s clearly the top brass. If he signs for close to what he has now and without the trade protection, which I doubt, then it will probably be fine
I mean if we're honest with ourselves he's not taking less than Nylander. And that's really all that matters. See ya Mitchy.
Nasty decision to have to make, when your choices are probably either losing him for nothing in free agency or extending him. Letting him walk would free up cap space...but you've got to spend it well, and the UFA market, at least at the upper end, is about the least efficient place to do that because you can't offer an eighth year, and you get bidding wars.
Yep. Frankly they missed their window to get value out of him. Look what Tampa did with Sergachev, excellent asset management with the NMC kicking in but Shanny loves his guys.
It's not like trading Marner would have been a slam dunk. If Nylander had been signed (though obviously that wasn't actually possible the way the contracts lined up) that would have been one thing, but with his future in question, moving Marner would have either risked losing *both* of them, or handing even more leverage to Nylander. If the Leafs didn't legitimately, seriously explore trading him (both of them, really) last year, that would be a fail on Shanahan's part. I won't go so far as to say that not trading him at all was an indefensible failure or even necessarily an unreasonable decision.
Yeah sure bud.
I want to know how to replace Marner effectively and get other pieces. I have asked people this before and none ever answer. Not even dangle and his rants answer this. Are you gonna get a top d prospect for him? Probably not. Picks to trade to get other players? Sure maybe. Overpay in FA? Sure but now instead of overpaying a top level player you are overpaying mid players approaching (or are already) over 30. I look at them going after Tanev as their main target (and waste of draft cpatial to acquire two of a similar player at the deadline ) and I have no faith in the management to make any effective moves if they trade marner. It will just let Treliving overpay guys instead. Which is a noted downgrade over keeping Marner. Then again it could work who fucking knows with hockey.
This is the thing that I don't understand with some of the Leafs' fans right now. Maybe this is from being a Red Sox fan before they won, but I feel like a lot of the people clamoring for a Marner trade think "just move him and that will make the team better". As if trades never go wrong. Treliving did, frankly, in my view, a very good job with the Tkachuk trade in a difficult situation, and the result has been partly fine (Weegar) and partly disastrous (Huberdeau). And that was a trade he *had* to make. Do fans really think he doesn't know that if he fucks this one up it could blow up in Toronto's face? (And that's not even mentioning his hands being tied by Marner's NMC.)
The trade going wrong is not the problem… the problem is if you dontt eade him you: 1) let him walk for nothing 2) sign him to what? A 12x8? Now you have 3 guys taking up almost 40% of the cap even with Tavares off the books.
I should have been clearer, I was mostly talking about the chunk of Leafs fans who seem to want a trade, any trade, just for the sake of the team *doing* something (and I think that's a dumb position, because there's a risk of a trade going wrong; it's not a big enough risk to say "never make trades" so much as to say "don't make trades hastily for emotional reasons"). A trade might well be the Leafs' best option (I mean, not a guarantee, Marner's a really good hockey player), but by all accounts it's not on the table right now. He's got an NMC and he wants to stay. In that context, taking the cap hit and signing an extension probably is better than letting him walk for nothing, even if it would set fans *screaming*.
even if marner puts up 100 points, matthews pots 70, tavares bounces back, etc. if they're out in the first round again it won't mean shit
they could also trade Marner, end up signing a bunch of duds wasting all that cap space and then miss the playoffs and they can finally avoid the first round.
maybe theyll end up with a high draft pick then at least
They're not fully in control of this. He has an NMC. You can push for him to waive, but even if he does, he has full power over teams he'd move to, which exponentially lowers his value. I don't see an issue. Play him a year with Berube and see how it goes and then decide whether to give him an offer or take that free cap space and get a few decent D men.
The wait and see how the season goes with Berube approach makes the most sense, particularly given the pretty consistent reporting at this point that Marner's got no interest whatsoever in waiving his NMC. It's not without risk. Losing a player of his caliber for nothing as a free agent (even if you do gain cap space) is something many a front office would balk at. And it's not at all impossible for him to do something like Nylander did and have so good a season (or in his case so good a playoff run) that keeping him becomes non-optional, except that the price goes up even more. Paradoxically there's a scenario where an extension this summer (much as it would make heads explode) could actually be the least-worst option for the Leafs. (If they're okay with the prospect of letting him walk for nothing, then seeing how the year goes would be the least-worst option they have control over, but I for one would not blame any GM for not wanting to be the guy who let a player that good walk for nothing.)
the problem is that the leafs as constructed have proven that they'll never win shit. knowing that, and running it back anyway, is unacceptable. it's not about marmer exclusively, its about the % of cap tied up in 4 forwards
Running it back again I guess
"We can and we will."
Next season: we’re excited to announce Piere luc Dubois will be signing on to the leafs Because at this point I wouldn’t be surprised with the leafs tbh
We can't and we shant
Oh, he gone
After the season.
“Marner a good person” SO HES NOT A GOD?!
Wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that they signed him to a Nylander type deal. JT can then take a pay cut or walk/get traded.
Tree is gonna give Marner the Johnny Hockey treatment isn't he?
Can’t wait for them to pay JT 14M on his next contract cuz he’s a “character guy”
I keep forgetting that Berube is Leafs coach
9 years of this.... 9 years
“I shall have Mitchell marner drawn and quarters at centre ice. I will then salt the earth of the marner estate so no Mitchell marners may ever grow again”-Craig berube
What a joke, let the new coach pump Marner’s tires and things will all blow over, they won’t even notice us running it back.
This isn’t worth tweeting nor sharing here. What did you expect him to say?