ALL EYES ON MITCH
Leafs’ leading scorer next in line for a pay hike, but re-signing Marner won’t be easy.
Nobody seriously doubts Mitch Marner will stay a Toronto Maple Leaf. Well, not publicly. You might get other hockey agents eager to talk about the potential of another team aiming an offer sheet at Toronto’s crowded salary cap, because imagine if NHL teams actually used the tools at their disposal. There are rumbles of discontent, vibrations. But nobody’s making public threats.
But once in a while, the comforting surface of things erupts. On Tuesday, after the Toronto Maple Leafs signed franchise centre Auston Matthews to a five-year contract extension, the Star’s Dave Feschuk called the agent of the next Leaf on the negotiation block, Mitch Marner. Darren Ferris had some things to say.
“So far they’ve been trying to lowball (Marner),” said Ferris. “That’s the reason we’ve come to this point.”
He said Matthews’ five-year, $11.634million-per-year contract wasn’t team-friendly; he said William Nylander didn’t take a discount, and Matthews didn’t take a discount, so why should his client — leading the team in points and ice time among forwards before Wednesday night’s game against Ottawa — take less than he is worth?
But what he’s worth is the question, and his people feel the Leafs haven’t offered him enough. Ferris confused the issue in a radio hit on TSN 1050, but here’s what happened: Feschuk called, Ferris answered, the quotes were accurate and on the record. Ferris acknowledges this. The story is straight.
It caused some sturm and drang around the team — the 21-year-old Marner had to answer questions about his future at the morning skate Wednesday, Ferris had to do some damage control, and the team’s silence was deliberate rather than simply quiet.
But it’s not like any of it was a surprise. The Marner camp has long considered Marner an underappreciated asset. Marner’s father Paul was quoted by The Athletic’s Jonas Siegel in a feature last year as saying, “It drives our family nuts when we hear you guys all talk about who should be the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Mitch never hardly gets any consideration. It’s because he’s like this happy-go-lucky little kid.”
In December, Ferris went on Leafs Lunch on TSN 1050 and said that Marner had already given back to the team by forgoing his full Schedule B bonuses as a rookie, which Matthews received. When asked Wednesday if he felt underappreciated by the team, Marner’s answer was not the smoothest.
“No, I mean, words are spun upon and things like that, and me and my family love it here, my agency loves it here, this
is a great place to play hockey, we have a great management, we have a great team in this locker room, and we all want, myself included, to be a Leaf for a long time,” said Marner. “And I’m sure that will happen.”
The denial seemed more reflexive than powerful. But he’s on the record.
Here’s the thing: Ferris may be veering a little all over the map, but the essential argument is sound. This season, before Marner produced two picturesque assists and Matthews scored once in a 5-4 win over Ottawa, Matthews was producing 3.9 points per 60 minutes of ice time, and Marner was producing 3.7; Marner had produced marginally more points per 60 at five-on-five, and was second in the NHL in primary points per 60 behind Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson; Matthews was 11th. Marner has been healthier than Matthews, and has 13 points in 13 playoff games, despite playing one post-season series with mononucleosis, to seven points in 13 games for Matthews.
Marner is a competitive hockey genius, but has been relegated to second banana because Matthews is a goal-scoring supernova centre, with potential to reach for the league’s ceiling.
So how do they make it work? Ferris can say the two sides aren’t so far apart, but the two sides clearly had very different views of their short negotiations last summer. They clearly haven’t gotten to the same place since then. There has been frustration here, no matter what damage control interviews say. The Marner camp believes he should be paid like Matthews. That’s a big ask, if not necessarily an unreasonable one. And it would further choke off Toronto’s salary-cap oxygen.
But nobody expects this to be a prelude to a divorce, not yet. The Leafs know he’s a special player, a local boy, a communi- ty figure, a good kid. Marner hasn’t said a word about not staying.
So general manager Kyle Dubas has to fix it. He will have to bridge that perceived gap in money and regard somehow. On term, a four-year deal ushers Marner to free agency; a five-year deal means the un- thinkable of Marner, Matthews and William Nylander becoming unrestricted free agents together in 2024. Anything above five years buys out more years of unrestricted free agency, but ups the annual average value. How do you make Marner happy?
The guess here is it’s simple, and it’s the line Jon Hamm barked out on Mad Men to an employee who complained about never hearing a thank you: “That’s what the money is for.” The Leafs have great young players who want to be paid as such. And you can’t lose Mitch Marner.
So they’ll keep him. But they will have to pay him, and it will make everything harder. Welcome to the Leafs’ championship window. It might be shorter than you, or they, thought.