Error in judgement or worthy risk?
It’s tough to evaluate exactly how the Toronto Maple Leafs handled Mitch Marner last week. On one hand, GM Brad Treliving was evidently ready to do whatever was necessary to improve his team during a week that included punting two first-round picks and prospect Fraser Minten in trades for Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, so Toronto’s openness to dealing Marner for Mikko Rantanen made a degree of sense. On the other hand, the Leafs should’ve had a better sense of what Marner’s answer would be before asking him to waive his no-trade clause. He’s a lifelong Toronto boy, a diehard Leafs fan living his fantasy and repeatedly expressing his desire to stay there; he’s also on the verge of going to market as an unrestricted free agent July 1 and calling his shot amid a long line of suitors. In even an outsider can see it was highly unlikely he’d waive his NTC and give up (a) his dream and (b) his bargaining power in the middle of a season with his team in a playoff race. Now that Toronto made the ask, the bell cannot be unrung, and the Leafs’ front office has created one hell of a distraction going forward. And that was true even if their reported secondary offer for Rantanen, the one not including Marner, was accepted; the cap space required for a Rantanen extension would’ve essentially banished Marner out of Toronto even if Marner was still physically present for the balance of this season.
The Leafs seemingly pushed Marner closer to leaving by explicitly letting him know they’d walk away from him for the right deal. Maybe the Leafs have been open to moving Marner a lot longer than people realize, as my colleague Frank Seravalli suggested on Daily Faceoff Live this week; the Leafs’ core can’t receive an infinite number of chances, and something will have to change if they continue flopping in the first round of the playoffs, hence exploring a Marner trade when the return finally seemed right.
That said: what if Rantanen was the only return that fit? One future Hall of Fame right winger for another. If’s not Rantanen, what available player comes close to matching Marner’s blend of high-end scoring and defensive play? That’s the scary part about the Rantanen gambit. It didn’t work out, and if the no-trade ask ruffled Marner’s feathers, the Leafs run the risk of opening 2025-26 with neither of Marner and Rantanen, with no other player on the market even close to either of them in value.
Which begs the question: if the Leafs don’t re-sign Marner this offseason, what will they do with the cap space? The cap jumps from $88 million to $95.5 million for 2025-26. The Leafs have seven defensemen already locked up next year and beyond in Carlo, Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Simon Benoit and Philippe Myers. They appear set in net for the forseeable future with Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll signed through 2026 and 2028, respectively.
Even factoring in a long-term extension for RFA left winger Matthew Knies and the possibility of UFA John Tavares re-signing on a discount, there will be plenty of cap space left over. Marner’s camp could make an exorbitant ask in the $14 million range, and they could afford him; remember, Tavares’ number will come down to the point their combined AAVs might not exceed their current hit of $21.903 million. So if Marner does in fact walk or the Leafs decide not to pursue him…what on Earth will they spend their projected $27.485 million in cap space after Knies and Tavares?
Marner lords above the rest of the 2025 UFA class in quality. The group isn’t loaded with overly high-end forwards in their primes. In the tier below Marner, you’ve got some reliable first-line contributors such as Nikolaj Ehlers and Brock Boeser; versatile two-way centers like Brock Nelson and Mikael Granlund; and power forwards such as Sam Bennett. There are former superstars in decline in Patrick Kane, Brad Marchand Jamie Benn. The defenseman group offers some established big-minute veterans who may end up slightly overpriced given the premium paid for the position: Aaron Ekblad, Jakob Chychrun, Ivan Provorov and so on.
It seems almost preordained that the Leafs pursue Bennett, who has terrorized them in the playoffs and brings a blend of skill and nastiness they desperately crave. Treliving drafted him to the Calgary Flames in 2014 and traded him to the Florida Panthers in 2021. But even if Bennett parlays his playoff-tailored game and 4 Nations Face-Off success into a splurgy overpay in, say, the $7 million AAV range, he’ll barely cover half what Marner will command. So who else fits Toronto’s needs? They could split the Marner spend on Bennett and Ehlers. If they wanted to load up and go even deeper on defense, they could woo two Ontario natives from the Panthers and pursue Ekblad on top of Bennett. The Ekblad plan (perhaps at a discount following his PED suspension?) might make more sense if Toronto decided it was time to move on from Rielly and explored a high-profile trade for a forward. And that would depend on what type of impactful contributor shook loose around the league. One idea would be to patch over the Marner hole by trading for the final season of Artemi Panarin’s contract, temporarily replacing Marner’s high-end playmaking while freeing the Leafs up to take bigger swings in summer 2026, when the likes of Kirill Kaprizov, Kyle Connor, Jack Eichel and (lol) Connor McDavid become UFAs, though none is guaranteed to make it to market.
Bottom line: if the Leafs decide not to re-sign Marner, it will leave a gargantuan hole in the lineup and one that won’t easily be replaced now that Rantanen is property of the Dallas Stars for the next eight seasons. The Leafs would have to rely on quite a spending spree, via free agency or trade, to get there. And depth won’t necessarily replace the impact of someone tied for sixth in the league in scoring over the past five seasons combined.
If Marner and the Leafs enjoy a triumphant spring with multiple playoff series wins, the decision to keep him should actually be easy. But if they flop again, the decision to walk away won’t be so easy. Not when there’s no adequate one-for-one replacement out there.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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