Mitch Marner dominated the first three games of the Stanley Cup final, with a four-point Game 3 that put Vegas up 2-1. In the next three games of the series, he had one point and was minus-five.Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
What sort of gift basket do you think the Maple Leafs should send Mitch Marner?
Potted plants are always nice. Maybe a couple of exotic nuts. What matters is the note.
You don’t want to seem too sorry that Marner has once again blown a tire at the exact wrong time. You also don’t anyone to know you’ve been running around the office high-fiving each other about it, which you have. Maybe something like, ‘We admire you for always having the courage to be yourself.’
With apologies to Gavin McKenna, Marner has just gone from the Leafs’ worst summer storyline to their best.
A week ago, he had the Conn Smythe trophy locked up. His Vegas team was up 2-1 in the final, and rolling. Vegas didn’t necessarily have to win. All Marner had to do to was close. He couldn’t.
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In the final three games of the series, Marner was transparent, which is different than being invisible. You could see the outline of him on the ice for 20-plus minutes a game, but opponents were passing right through him.
No goals, one assist and a cumulative minus-five in the biggest triple-header of his life. That sounds familiar. While the rest of the Leafs made a habit of taking the playoffs off, Marner’s go-to move was no-showing at the finales. Apparently, that hasn’t changed.
Now that the Hurricanes – the most anonymous good hockey team since the KGB had its own club – are champs, the story around Marner has flipped. It’s no longer that the Leafs lost out on him. It’s that he lost out on Carolina.
Everyone suddenly remembers that Marner nixed a trade deadline deal last season that would have sent him to tobacco country for Mikko Rantanen. The implication is that everyone could have had what they wanted – the Leafs a star to replace the one they were losing, and Marner an eventual ring. But oh no, Marner had to get greedy. Now everyone loses. Marner has become the fable of the scorpion and the frog.
Marner, right, had the opportunity to join the Hurricanes at last year's trade deadline. Instead, the then-Maple Leaf exercised his no-trade clause and signed with Vegas in free agency.Lucas Peltier/Reuters
Is this fair? Of course not.
At the time the Leafs wanted to move him, Marner’s wife was in the third trimester of her first pregnancy. He’d have had to leave Toronto for the U.S. immediately, and stay there for months. Can you imagine trying to sell that idea at home, where there are knives and poisonous cleaning products?
In hindsight, it may not have been the greatest hockey decision, but it was, is and always will be a no-brainer husband decision. I hope for his sake he didn’t even float it as one of those, ‘Not that I’m saying I’d do this, but …’ conversations.
The Leafs screwed up by not attempting to move Marner earlier, or at least talking to him about it. Given his family situation and his full no-trade clause, this panic at the deadline was ridiculous.
The Leafs have handled a lot of things clumsily in the last year or so. Nothing encapsulates their managerial incompetence better than that failed trade. It’s not that it didn’t work. It’s that someone actually thought it would.
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For Marner, getting the destination he wanted has been a mixed blessing. He made his money. He gets sunshine 300 days a year. No one recognizes him, or hassles him, or cares about what he does for a living. Right now, the story running around Nevada about the Stanley Cup final collapse is, ‘We have a hockey team?’
There’s only one drawback to Marner’s Vegas move – rather than shed his bad reputation, he has reinforced it. Had he remained with the Leafs, people would have assumed forever that Toronto was 100 per cent of the problem. Now that’s no longer possible.
Until he wins a Stanley Cup, Marner’s tendency to choke will define him. How likely is he to win one? Statistically speaking, not very. A lot of teams in the Western Conference will probably be better next year.
Meanwhile, the Golden Knights kind of are what they are. In fact, they’re probably getting a little worse, because now they have the version of Marner who’s stuck in his own head a lot of the time. It could work out for them, but it’s not probable.
Marner, left, continues his pursuit of a Stanley Cup win, but his Las Vegas team may not be as good next year, with his Western Conference rivals improving, Cathal Kelly writes.James Guillory/Reuters
There’s a word for how this has all turned out for the Leafs – annoying.
It isn’t obvious how they blew the first 10 years of Marner’s career. Maybe he should have been the number one guy, rather than Auston Matthews. Maybe they should have got him intense media training straight away. Maybe they should’ve been tougher on everyone when it came to their contracts, and set a harder tone.
All that is obvious is that, however they managed it, they did blow it. For 17 of 20 postseason games this year, Marner was a force. Not the best player on the ice every night, but on a lot of them. His two-way game remains near the top of the league.
How do you whiff so hard and for so long on a player like that? The Leafs haven’t bothered trying to explain it. They’re hiding behind all the hate Marner stirs up. It lets them off the hook.
Were I McKenna – a presumptive future Leaf as the first pick of the upcoming NHL draft – I would have one question in mind: ‘How do I prevent Toronto from turning me into Mitch Marner 2.0?’
A good couple of first moves would be to slap a smile on your face and pick a fight in your first shift. Toronto loves a cheerful thug. Marner never was able to figure out either thing. Maybe someone should have said it to him?
What Marner has proved since moving is that it wasn’t all his fault. In the end, his mistake wasn’t in how he chose to leave, or leaving, full stop. It was waiting too long to make that decision, until after the damage was permanent.