Minor Ex-Leaf News

[cw]

I'm not clear on the performance bonus grievance. I think Marner got schedule A.
Matthews got Schedule B but who could foresee winning the lottery and the exceptional nature of that?
Many 4th overall picks did get schedule B
What of Schedule B would Marner have got?
The team was under cap pressure. $5 mil in performance bonuses in 2017 ...
I'm not clear on why that would be an enormous grievance for Marner.

I took a quick look at this
I might have missed something ...
Marner was 4th in league assists in 2018-19 which would have resulted in a $120,000 performance B bonus
Other than that, he didn't seem to get enough trophy votes, goals, pts, ppg etc to qualify for any other performance B bonuses over the 3 year entry deal.

I do not see that as a big grievance.
They gave him $65.4 mil on his next 6 year contract. It could have been $65.3 and they tacked on $100k to make up the performance B omission. It is a tiny 0.1% difference in the next contract.
When they said they were not going to give out performance B bonuses, they had no way of knowing they were going to win the lottery and get Matthews.
That claim smells like BS media posturing by Ferris to me.

 

[Bender]

That certainly fair, and I'm not saying the claims are baseless. But one side keeps bringing them up and treating these as cardinal sins that led to the player's decision to... play here for another full 6 years and stay for the entire duration because it was sooooo bad?

I think we can all see with actual on-ice, on-camera, written statements, and hiring decisions, that the Leafs did everything they could to support and optimize Marner in Toronto. I can't say they did it perfectly, but it's all on the table: hired vaunted sports therapists, top line minutes even when it stopped working, every special team assignment even when it stopped working, ludicrous second contract, put him front and centre on all the fun happy publicity and marketing, sheltered him from speaking to press after games, gave talking points to his teammates to extol his virtues, fired the GM that had a longstanding policy of not paying schedule Bs because he liked to put the team ahead of the individual (but made an organizational exception for a 1st overall pick), fired the coach that kept him apart from more points for the coach that tied him at the hip to a generational scoring centre, fired the GM that was hinting at trading him (or more likely Willy, who they've reportedly market-checked basically every offseason)...

And on the other side of the ledger, Ferris is essentially saying the Leafs tried to negotiate a lower salary and then tried to trade him when he clearly wasn't going to extend. Are these not standard operating procedures for any and all sports organizations?

I'm having trouble naming one player that was treated with softer velvet gloves by the Leafs than Marner, who could have very easily been the most beloved hometown draft pick ever (and was for that first 4 years since he was drafted).

Ferris also brought up the carjacking which has nothing to do with the Leafs or fans. It's grievance after grievance even where none exists - so much of what Ferris said is based on a very narrow view of events and not close to objective reality (Mitch being the ONLY one criticized for playoff performance for example).

To make things work in any relationship sometimes you have to bury the hatchet - if my fiancee and I had grievances at each other for every minor issue we'd be long broken up. I don't know how the Leafs and Marner could have ever worked out if the schedule B bonuses were forever held against them, even with 3 separate GMs.

 

[rjd]

That certainly fair, and I'm not saying the claims are baseless. But one side keeps bringing them up and treating these as cardinal sins that led to the player's decision to... play here for another full 6 years and stay for the entire duration because it was sooooo bad?

I think we can all see with actual on-ice, on-camera, written statements, and hiring decisions, that the Leafs did everything they could to support and optimize Marner in Toronto. I can't say they did it perfectly, but it's all on the table: hired vaunted sports therapists, top line minutes even when it stopped working, every special team assignment even when it stopped working, ludicrous second contract, put him front and centre on all the fun happy publicity and marketing, sheltered him from speaking to press after games, gave talking points to his teammates to extol his virtues, fired the GM that had a longstanding policy of not paying schedule Bs because he liked to put the team ahead of the individual (but made an organizational exception for a 1st overall pick), fired the coach that kept him apart from more points for the coach that tied him at the hip to a generational scoring centre, fired the GM that was hinting at trading him (or more likely Willy, who they've reportedly market-checked basically every offseason)...

And on the other side of the ledger, Ferris is essentially saying the Leafs tried to negotiate a lower salary and then tried to trade him when he clearly wasn't going to extend. Are these not standard operating procedures for any and all sports organizations?

I'm having trouble naming one player that was treated with softer velvet gloves by the Leafs than Marner, who could have very easily been the most beloved hometown draft pick ever (and was for that first 4 years since he was drafted).

I think the Leafs do a lot to support all their players. Whether it's starting an all Swedish line after Borge Salming died, to making sure that players get taken care of properly when they are injured, like when Dubas stayed in Jersey when Mikheyev got hurt. It wasn't like they were solely bending over backward just for Mitch Marner. They did stuff for other players as well.

I don't agree with Ferris's statements. I don't think it's the Leafs job to come out and handle all the negative things that can be said about a player. I actually think that's kind of impossible. If you look at the time when Matthews got in trouble for mooning a security guard, the Leafs didn't protect Matthews from that.

Here's the thing though, I don't necessarily think that Mitch felt the way that Ferris is outlining it. I think it's just Ferris trolling Leaf fans, not necessarily Marner himself. Should Marner tell Ferris to shut the hell up? Probably, but maybe Marner isn't even aware that he is saying this stuff. Attributing Ferris's personal opinions of the Leafs back to Marner is probably a bit of a stretch.

For Marner's part, he always looked uncomfortable in the media. He did get held up at a mall. He did take a lot of heat from fans. If Marner wasn't happy in Toronto, I can say I understand it. I don't think he ever directly torpedoed the team. I think he just said he needed a change, and I can kind of see why he wanted one. Sittler didn't get death threats. Now maybe Marner didn't either, but if he did, think about that for a minute. Do you want to live in that environment? It's a little over the top in my opinion over the outcome of a hockey game.

At the end of the day it didn't work out here. The team and the player were mismatched, probably due to missteps on both sides of the ledger. It looked so promising at the start. Uber talented Toronto boy playing for his home town team. Match made in heaven that ended in a bitter divorce.