Recent content by mr grieves

He had the pressure of putting the team on his back because the team wasn't as deep. He, like the rest of the team, ran into the fact that he's not one of 2-3 players in the world who can do that. If there had been any deals among the core 4 contracts during the COVID plateau and/or if the...

Well, except when you think (mis)quoting Marner mumbling through a locker clean-out press scrum can overturn the evidence of our lying eyes -- then words are very meaningful indeed.

“because Marner is always liked by his teammates, he didn’t want to go somewhere else to win” is the least plausible one you’ve come up with yet. We’ve gone from “don’t believe your lying eyes” to “here, let’s imagine Marner and his buds hanging out.” Here, we agree. If he’d done this (ie led...

Yes, there’s even more reason for Mathews to be down on the team than Marner had. Marner’s either smarter, holds teams to a higher standard, or had a different contract expiration. Whichever it was, he realized it wasn’t happening in Toronto and decided to move on rather than re-sign.

It isn’t literally the same decision, but it is fundamentally the same one: an elite player looks around at his team—supporting cast, young players coming, how management improves things—and decides that his best chance to contribute to a winning program is elsewhere.

He said “that would be a goal.” Not “my” or “the” or “the goal for me.” Here’s Marner on the in-year situation with the Leafs, from when he joined Vegas: You can parse that muddle however you’d like, but it’s muddle and that’s what’s telling. I’m not sure what’s so difficult about accepting...

This isn't that complicated, cw. He didn't want to leave Toronto before his contract was up, and he didn't want to sign another contract with Toronto.

The transcription is wrong. He doesn’t say it’s “the goal.” He says it’s “a goal.” Marner knew he was done here. I think Dubas knew he would be done a year earlier.

Obviously.

I don’t think Treliving was eager to see Marner walk. And, all things being equal, sure, I would rather have a player like Marner than one like Nylander, but the important thing here is that Nylander wanted to be in Toronto, whereas Marner didn’t (and maybe that’s just because Marner is smarter...

It is a bit of a straw man to say anyone was eager to see Marner run out of town so the Leafs could hit the UFA market. Marner was not, as you say, the problem, but trading him after 2021 or 2022 was probably the best solution available to solve the problem created by shedding all the...

Yeah, I agree. He and Dubas came to the same conclusion at about the same time -- the team wasn't built right to succeed in the playoffs -- and I think Dubas was the only guy in the organization sensible enough to see how it was going to play out (a couple more seasons of futility during which...

I think he won't because of all that and the ownership thing. Those American teams with a smaller group seem better positioned to recruit such a guy than a suit with a board.