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Jack Eichel, Chris Chelios are wrong about the history of Mitch Marner and the Maple Leafs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
With his on-and-off-ice actions, Vegas Golden Knights star right winger Mitch Marner has turned into a divisive figure.
Many, if not most, Toronto Maple Leafs fans desperately wanted Marner to be a driver of the team’s Stanley Cup playoff success. When that didn’t happen, there was obvious, natural criticism of Marner – criticism magnified in Marner’s case because of his expensive salary and status as a Toronto-born-and-raised citizen.
Since he left Toronto for Las Vegas last summer, Marner has been an ongoing subject of criticism. But in this year’s post-season, Marner has been the stellar difference-maker Leafs fans hoped he’d be, leading all playoff point-getters with 11 assists and 18 points in 12 games. So some NHL figures are going out of their way to blame Toronto, Leafs management, and Toronto media as easy scapegoats for what they’d like to convince you plagued Marner all these years.
In particular, former NHL defenseman Chris Chelios and Golden Knights superstar center Jack Eichel have spoken out, ripping the Maple Leafs, Toronto media, and Toronto fans.
“The Leafs should have kept him happier,” Chelios said Thursday on TNT. “I’ve said enough about the Toronto media and what they do, and the fans are so critical in feeding off the media, so you’ve got to take a step back here. You can’t keep changing things.”
“I’m so happy for him. I feel like he’s had a lot of critics,” Eichel added after Vegas eliminated the Anaheim Ducks in their second-round series. “I feel like he’s shutting a lot of people up right now.”
By buying this narrative of Marner as the victim, Chelios and Eichel are revealing nothing about Leafs Land, and everything about how little they’ve paid attention to how much the Maple Leafs deferred to Marner before he left Toronto for an easier go of it in the relative anonymity of Las Vegas.
MORE: NHL Conn Smythe Front Runners Mitch Marner, Frederik Andersen Are Changing Opinions With Each Game
Indeed, blaming Toronto fans who wanted nothing more than for Marner to succeed is nuts. As we’ve noted numerous times, the Leafs bent over backward to please Marner. Some overzealous fans went over the line regarding Marner being allowed to live with a reasonable amount of privacy, but acknowledging that nuanced fact is far different from painting all Leafs fans with the same brush.
Meanwhile, the idea that Toronto media drove Marner to Vegas is another deeply flawed notion, as many high-end players have thrived in the Toronto spotlight. And that’s why this talk about Marner somehow being the caterpillar in Toronto and the butterfly in Vegas is objective nonsense.
Really, every NHL team that wins a Cup or goes deep into the playoffs isn’t automatically a comment on the teams their players previously played for. For instance, would you say Eichel’s success since leaving the Buffalo Sabres is a comment on Sabres fans because he wasn’t on a deep-enough, talented-enough Sabres squad? Of course not. And would you say Florida Panthers center Sam Bennett’s Sunshine State success is a comment on Calgary Flames fans, given that he didn’t have success as a Flame? Of course you wouldn’t.
The real issue for Marner in Toronto was that the Leafs couldn’t find the right secondary players to surround their core with. It’s been a constant carousel of veterans in Leafs Land. When the Buds were playing high-stakes games, their secondary players didn’t step up with strong performances to take heat off of Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and John Tavares.
We’re not here to suggest the Leafs don’t deserve some degree of blame regarding Marner’s departure. It takes two to tango, and Maple Leafs brass should’ve taken a different tact with Marner in some regards. However, the sooner we abandon the concept of the boogeyman, Toronto press, and the lynch mob, Toronto fans, the better we’ll all be.
MORE: Why Is Golden Knights' Mitch Marner Suddenly A Playoff Performer?
The other factor in Marner’s surge in playoff production is that Vegas’ first two playoff opponents – the Utah Mammoth and the Ducks – are hardly leviathan teams.
People are celebrating Marner’s eye-popping goal Thursday for good reason – it’s a great goal – but let’s stop pretending they’ve just defeated the Carolina Hurricanes and Colorado Avalanche. We’ll find out shortly how well Marner and Vegas play against the Avalanche in the Western Conference final – and hey, if Marner continues producing a slew of points, more power to him. He’s not a villain, and we harbor no hate for him.
However, let’s also end suggestions that Marner is some woebegone saint. He got everything he wanted in leaving the Leafs, including a healthy raise. So if we were advising Chelios and Eichel on getting their comments right, we’d advise them to take a look at the macro picture of Marner’s trajectory as a player and as a person.
Marner isn’t the victim of the city of Toronto or the Leafs. He’s an excellent hockey player, and people walked on eggshells to cater to him in his time wearing Blue and White. You can be happy Marner found a fit in Vegas without buying into the tiresome, false narrative that he was done wrong in Toronto.
The Maple Leafs attempted to trade Marner, but, as he was entitled to do, he declined the trades they put together. He chose to run out his contract and leave in free agency.
In the end, nobody wanted Marner to succeed more than Leafs fans did. It didn’t turn out well for him in Toronto, but any suggestion that doesn’t assign at least some blame to Marner is flat-out inaccurate. Marner played a role in his demise with the Leafs, and when it’s all said and done, his legacy will reflect that.
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