Mitch Marner sheds the Toronto Maple Leafs gloom for Vegas sunshine, but playoff scrutiny remains his ultimate test. Can he deliver a Cup?
As he settles into the first month of his eight-year Vegas residency, Mitch Marner is looking a lot like the player we saw for the past nine seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
With 10 points in seven games, Marner is once again near the top of the NHL scoring race. He's found chemistry with center Jack Eichel, who leads the NHL in points with 16, as well as Pavel Dorofeyev, who is tied for the lead in goals with seven. Additionally, he has the Golden Knights in first place in the Pacific Division.
But while life for Marner is now different in many ways, the weather in Las Vegas on Friday was a balmy 24 degrees Celsius; one thing remains the same: he’s once again going to be judged by how far he goes in the playoffs.
To be sure, no one believed Marner’s regular-season individual numbers were going to suffer by leaving the Leafs for the Golden Knights. For now, his 1.43 points-per-game average is actually higher than his career best of 1.26 points per game last season with the Leafs. Yet, no one will care unless Vegas, which hasn't advanced past the second round in the past two years, does not go deep.
Marner knows this, and so does Vegas. In addition to trading for Marner in the summer, the team recently added goaltender Carter Hart.
This team is built to win a Stanley Cup. Anything less will be deemed a disappointment.
That being said, the addition of Marner has already made the Golden Knights an early championship contender. It’s no secret that Marner can do things with the puck that few of his peers can do, even if it means extending his time on the ice. We saw that in his fifth game of the season, when the 28-year-old tied a franchise record by recording a shift that lasted four minutes and 14 seconds in a 6-5 win against Boston on Oct. 16.
Two nights later, he scored twice in a 6-1 win against Calgary, which included a backend deke that had his teammates in awe.
“It was pretty impressive,” Golden Knights netminder Adin Hill told reporters of Marner's second goal. “Not many guys have the hands to be able to pull that off at a game speed like that. Really a beautiful goal.”
Of course, scoring highlight-reel goals in the regular season has never been a challenge for Marner. It's when the games get tighter and more physical that he isn't always at his best.
Last year, Marner had no points and was a minus-2 in Game 7 of a second-round series against Florida. A year earlier, he also went without a point in Game 7 of a first-round series against the Bruins. It was a trend that seemed to follow not only Marner, but the rest of Toronto's "Core 4".
So the question is whether that trend will continue next spring in Vegas?
No one knows for sure.
So many different things can go wrong for a player and his team, some of which are out of his control, which makes it difficult to predict that Marner and Vegas will have the type of post-season that has so far eluded him. Marner is being paid exceedingly well at $ 12 million per season for the next eight years. With big money comes bigger responsibilities. If Marner is unable to exorcise his demons and advance deep into the playoffs, he is going to have to live with it, just like he did in Toronto.
However, if he can get the Golden Knights a second championship, then he'll finally get the praise that he never really had with the Leafs.
The risk and reward are there for Marner’s taking, but there’s plenty of downfall here. Just imagine the sentiment out of Toronto if the Leafs win two rounds and Vegas loses in the first round. Or what if Toronto wins a Cup without him?
To say Leafs fans won’t be charitable towards Marner would be an understatement. They will never let Marner live it down, and he knows it.
Marner may only play in Toronto once a year now, but he’s going to be measured against the Maple Leafs every year, and in every game he plays. His exit from Leafs Nation wasn’t pretty, and if Marner doesn’t help steer Vegas to the Western final and beyond, he may find leaving Toronto wasn’t exactly the ideal career choice.
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