Home » Featured Post »
We’ll start this off with some sad news, as we learned of the passing of Sergei Berezin yesterday:
I can’t say that I have a ton of memories of Berezin playing for the Leafs specifically. At that time in my life I wasn’t watching a ton of hockey, but I do remember those teams and I wish we could get back to feeling the way about our Leafs that those teams made us feel…
It would appear that some fans are taking that feeling for granted, as the Florida Panthers, who won the Stanley Cup on Monday night, are having the saddest Cup celebrations that ever existed. Nobody cares about hockey in Florida, which is obvious because we know this type of thing wouldn’t happen in Canada….
Let’s speak about a quick/ridiculous theory of mine and that’s that the Chicago Blackhawks are considering adding Mitch Marner to their organization. I’ll try to give a short synopsis without missing anything:
- Just after the season ended it was rumoured that Toronto checked in on Seth Jones. I know a lot of people don’t want Jones, but we’ll get to that later.
- The general consensus was that the Leafs wanted to make a “hockey deal” that would help their team immediately if they were to deal Marner.
- It was then rumoured that Marner had submitted a list of teams that he’d go to. That rumour was shot down by the Leafs and Marner’s camp, but it would have been to try to keep things in check. The rumoured number of teams he’d approve was 9. Hand in hand with that it was whispered that Marner would welcome a change of scenery.
- It started to come out that the Leafs were willing to keep Marner and were in the process of negotiating a new contract with him. This could have been the Leafs doing their legwork to give other teams an idea about what Mitch might want on his next contract.
- Meanwhile, Marner’s agent came out to say that he intends to play out his contract this season and see what happens. Again, it makes sense that this was posturing. If they came out and said they’d like a trade it could hurt Toronto’s negotiating stance. Instead of considering moving him to improve the team, now you’d HAVE to move him and simply take the best offer. I think you can thank Mitch Marner for helping this along in this case, because we all know he’d like a change of scenery, but he’s created a narrative where he isn’t asking to leave, which would make teams question their ability to keep him past this coming year and possibly offer less with that in mind as well.
- This one came and went very quickly, but it was rumoured that the list of teams that Mitch would accept a trade to dropped to 4. They were the Dallas Stars, Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings and the Chicago Blackhawks. (honestly, I can’t remember if it was LA, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m off by one, but I’m 100% about the other three)
- Recently we’ve heard that an issue the Leafs are having is that the teams that Mitch has approved and can fit him in under the cap don’t have top defenders they are willing to move. That makes sense when you consider Dallas really only has Miro Heiskanen as a top defender and L.A. may be unwilling to move Doughty or Clarke. Rumours persist about Vegas sending Shea Theodore and Logan Thompson to the Leafs for Marner, but they have a lot on their plate already so I question the validity of that. That only leaves Chicago……. and Seth Jones.
- Chicago traded for Ilya Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty last night, essentially beefing up on wingers and adding some faces to the fray that Marner would know. While Mikheyev is a cap dump, those two still add valuable depth to the team, which makes me wonder if the Hawks would consider trying to turn the corner and start adding real pieces to the mix. They are also rumoured to be considering adding Patrick Kane back to the roster. Kane isn’t what he used to be, but having him on your 2nd line with Mitch on the 1st would give them some dangerous pieces up front.
- With the emergence of Alex Vlasic and Kevin Korchinski, while also retaining the services of Connor Murphy, the Hawks’ blueline may not be damaged as much as one would think if they traded Seth Jones, their top defender. With that said, a lot could change tomorrow evening, depending on which player they select at #2. If they take Ivan Demidov, then keeping Jones makes more sense. However, if they select one of the top defenders in the draft, such as right shot Artyom Levshunov, then maybe they would be more willing to move Jones to make room for the young guys to play and grow.
- I wrote about Chicago being a landing spot for Marner before, you can read that here. While some things have changed since that was written (they traded up from pick #20 this year to #18 and I had #20 as part of the package going to Toronto. I doubt they moved up to trade the pick), most things haven’t and one of those things is that the “fancy stats” crowd have absolutely vilified Seth Jones. They’ve done it so effectively that he is now considered to have the worst contract in the league. The same people told us that Simon Benoit was a terrible signing and had a meltdown about the direction Brad Treliving was taking the team. If it isn’t obvious by now, some of their numbers are off and until they fix whatever it is that’s wrong with their calculations whatever they say should be dismissed immediately. If you don’t want Seth Jones because you’ve watched him and thats your opinion, I respect it, but if you don’t want Seth Jones because of what you’ve read and heard, then you need to question what you’ve read and heard, that’s all I’m saying.
We’ll end this with a link to a Luke Fox article, which makes some very valid points about Mitch Marner: