Mitch Marner (93) is headed to his first Stanley Cup final after his Vegas Golden Knights swept the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday.Candice Ward/Getty Images
Midway through the conference final, speaking about his new team, Mitch Marner took an unveiled shot at his old one.
“We have an older group that just stays patient and stays calm. We don’t turn on each other. We don’t get mad at each other,” Marner said.
Was he thinking about the Maple Leafs as he said it? It doesn’t matter, because that’s how it was interpreted. Marner did nothing afterward to dispute the interpretation.
Despite winning the first pick in the draft, it has been a miserable off-season for the Leafs. Marner’s the main reason for that.
On Tuesday, he and the Knights climbed over the broken body of the Colorado Avalanche and into the Stanley Cup final. The only thing that looks likely to stop them now is the NHL’s schedulers.
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Marner is the leading postseason point getter (21) and none of his teammates have told him to stop crying on the bench, as William Nylander once did. Marner doesn’t just look like a whole new hockey player. He looks like a whole new person – like he’s aged into himself or something.
Before the Leafs traded him at gunpoint to Vegas, they must have had a discussion about worst-case scenarios. What’s happening now is that conversation brought to life.
Thankfully, it can get worse.
Marner winning the Cup is one thing. That would be a humiliating commentary on the Leafs human resource management, coaching, scouting and ability to negotiate. All those things evidently failed during Marner’s time with the team.
Marner, seen here getting to the net in Game 2 of the NHL's Western Conference final, is the league's top-scoring player in the playoffs.Jamie Schwaberow/Getty Images
This isn’t a Phil Kessel situation. Kessel went from the No. 1 guy with the Leafs to the NO. 3 guy with the Penguins and won a couple of championships.
Marner went from the Leafs’ No. 2 to – in these playoffs, at least – Vegas’ No. 1. How do you explain that except as the result of managerial incompetence? At the very least, it shows a disturbing inability to understand what you’ve got and how to get the most out of it. If Marner can do this, why was Auston Matthews the tip of the spear, and why would you continue on with him in the same position?
What the Leafs must really fear is Marner addressing those questions. Were he to win the Cup, would an emboldened Marner embark on a postchampionship truth-telling tour?
If he’s taking pops at them in the dressing room mid-playoffs, what might he say in the comfort of a sympathetic podcast, with former pros egging him on? Kessel didn’t do that, but Kessel didn’t run hot. Marner, on the other hand, is an emotional blast furnace.
Even worse, there’s what Marner may be saying in private.
The Leafs continue to dribble information about their core mission this summer – convincing Matthews to do the job he is contractually obligated to do.
This has involved a weeks-long effort to get the guy on the phone. He’s a 28-year-old single professional athlete. He sleeps with his phone(s) in his hand. Why has this been so difficult?
It doesn’t bode well for the Leafs that they are willing participants in Matthews’s public humiliation ritual. How low does new GM John Chayka have to bow before Matthews acknowledges his authority? One has a hard time imagining Bill Zito debasing himself for Aleksander Barkov, or Barkov expecting Zito to do so.
Whatever culture problems the Leafs have, they aren’t getting better. They’re getting worse. I’m sure adding an 18-year-old next-big-thing into that locker room, where he’ll suck up all the oxygen Matthews and Nylander think is theirs by birthright will go just great.
Auston Matthews (left) and Mitch Marner were teammates for nine years together in Toronto.Dan Hamilton/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters
If the Leafs are having a hard time convincing Matthews that he should want to come back to work, what happens when Marner gets to him?
The playoffs are a busy time (for some), but the summer yawns from mid-June onward. What if Marner starts texting Matthews memes about breaking bad habits and the revitalizing effect of new challenges?
How do the Leafs counter that? ‘Well, we’re not saying we can win now. What we’re saying is that we will win at some point. Don’t you want to hold hands with Mats Sundin and leap into the unknown?’
Unlikely though it may have been, any thought of letting Matthews go willingly is now completely out the window. Marner’s made it impossible. One guy you didn’t rate high enough getting to a Cup is a disaster. Two guys is an extinction-level event. No C-suite life could survive that meteor.
So Matthews will be back, even if whoever the Leafs hire as their next coach has to throw him over the boards to start his shifts.
Matthews will return knowing that there is life after Toronto. He’s heard all about it from someone who was there. He’s even watched it on television.
If Matthews wants to go, this will have to be entirely his own idea, which Matthews won’t be able to do. It’s not in hockey players to be the bad guy. They’d prefer to sulk their way to self-actualization.
All of which adds up to a miserable off-season becoming a miserable season. One can’t wait for Matthews to declare an end to questions about his staying or leaving, and that look he gets whenever the media thwart him. Unlike Leafs’ executives, the press don’t take orders from the players.
The winner here is Marner. In Toronto, owing in part to his performances, but more so to his tendency to act out, he took most of the blame. For nine years, the other members of the Core Four were still willing to run into the wall. Marner opted out. Let’s be honest – no one was that sad to see him go. The team hoped to erase his memory the moment he left.
Now that he’s gone, Marner has become the most powerful person in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. The right words in the right ears and it’s possible he could bring the whole thing down.