Photo Credit: Nick Barden, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Leafs Can't Keep Marner
With the salary cap only going up by a million dollars next year, the Toronto Maple Leafs are facing a cap crunch crisis as the team heads into this offseason and next.
The Toronto Maple Leafs employ a Studs'n'Duds approach to roster building, resulting in four stud forwards sucking up half the cap space, leaving the other eighteen dud slobs on the team to share the rest.
Sounds great and all, except for only one problem: The Leafs have lost a record breaking six consecutive times in the first round of the playoffs, and the pressure either to produce, or make a change, has reached a climax.
They've put themselves in a damned if you do, damned if you don't, situation of their own making.
Time To Trade Mitch Marner.
Either the Toronto Maple Leafs trade one of the mega-rich, mega-millionaires, that comprise the lackadaisical leadership of this team or they continue to remain mired in mediocrity.
My preference would be Nylander but he wouldn't save enough cap space. Besides, Kyle Dubas stupidly promised to never trade Nylander so long as he remained GM. Matthews ain't going anywhere, and Tavares has a NTC.
So that leaves Marner.
The Leafs need to trade this win nothing penalty box cry baby now.
Trading Marner Makes Sense
Calgary got a return of Huberdeau, Weegar, Schwindt, and a first round pick for Matthew Tkachuk, who was a pending UFA at the time.
Being as that Marner is signed until 2024/25, I'm pretty sure the Leafs should be able to get an even better return.
Marner's just gonna disappear in the playoffs again anyway. All that money and he still can't buy a goal when it matters most. His greed and lack of production in the postseason are the exact reasons why the Leafs should trade Marner.
His contract structure and regular season production are what make Marner a desirable trade target for other teams.
In stubborn failed attempt to prove "We can and we will", the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager, Kyle Dubas, has put the team in a cap crunch crisis, the only way out of which would seem to be trading Mitch Marner.
As Dubas is currently without a contract, trading Marner may not even be his decision to make. Should the unthinkable happen and he not return, any incoming GM will be under intense pressure to make a quick fix to get this team out of this mess Dubas has made for himself.
Trading Marner appears the quickest and easiest way of doing that.