And yet, one of their top players has yet to be signed. Did you notice how I said ONE of their top players? Well, that’s because Mitch Marner is, in fact, NOT the Maple Leafs’ foremost contributor and no amount of public posturing from his camp will change that.
Unfortunately, there has still been a lot of public posturing.
From the series of thinly-veiled reports hinting towards Marner’s dissent that were funnelled through specific insiders (I’ll let you guess which one), to the earlier rantings of his agent and father, to the execution of a negotiation blueprint as predictable as it is ineffective, the strategy Marner has chosen to go about determining his new contract may have had the opposite effect it originally intended.