Nylander shuts down a wild theory about ex-Toronto Maple Leafs teammate Mitch Marner
Even now, more than a month from his high-profile departure from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Vegas Golden Knights, Mitch Marner still finds himself at the centre of much discussion around his former team.
At the trade deadline, Vegas was rumoured to be interested in a three-team trade that involved bringing Marner to Nevada, though he shut the move down at the time due to his no-trade clause. Marner ended up in Vegas after a sign-and-trade, after reportedly dodging the Leafs in contract negotiations.
“I was very happy and very fortunate. We thought about going to free agency, but this is the place we wanted to be. We didn’t want to lose that opportunity. We wanted to join this hockey team,” Marner told the Vegas media in his introductory press conference. “[At the trade deadline] is when we started thinking about it, but not overthinking it, I guess. At that time, I was still very committed to playing hockey in Toronto. I wanted to focus on just being there and finishing a job there.”
Marner mentioning that he was considering his future midseason brought up a few theories from Leafs fans: Did he quit on the team midseason, knowing that he’d be gone in the summer?
Well, according to one of his longtime teammates, there’s not much weight to that theory.
Marner scored two goals in the game immediately following the trade deadline and put up 25 points in his final 20 regular-season games. In 13 playoff games, Marner put up 13 points, second on the team behind William Nylander.
“Not sure where that stuff comes from, but I don’t think he was ever thinking of leaving ahead of time,” Nylander told NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger. “I actually asked him during the season, and he said he was concentrating on Toronto. I didn’t want to press him on that and let him be because it was obviously on his mind, but his play was focused on helping us. Then I asked him after the season, and he wasn’t sure.”
In any case, while we may never know how exactly Marner’s final days with the Leafs went behind the scenes, hopefully Nylander’s comments can put some of the speculation that he’d suddenly bailed on his team to bed.