After another disappointing Toronto Maple Leafs playoff loss, it's time to break up the core four forwards and that might mean moving on from Mitch Marner, who becomes a free agent at the end of the 2024-25 season. The mystery surrounding whether Mitch Marner remains a Toronto Maple Leafs player after this summer continues. According to TSN's Darren Dreger, who appeared on TSN 1050's First Up [https://x.com/FirstUp1050/status/1802704050313392633] on Monday morning, Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving would rather sign Marner to an extension than send him off in what would likely be a blockbuster trade. "Now, if Brad Treliving has a conversation with a club or clubs, and there's a potential trade scenario that develops from those conversations, yeah, he could take that to the Marner camp. And the Marner camp could say, 'Yep, alright, you obviously don't want me, so I'm okay with that. And by the way, there's a big extension that comes with it? Okay, yeah, fine,'" Dreger reported. "I believe, based on the people I've talked to, and again as we're having this conversation, Marner's preference is to play out his contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs. It doesn't mean he's going to walk out the door after next year, that doesn't mean it at all. Of course, there's risk of that because he'd be a pending unrestricted free agent. That's not the perfect position for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but Marner negotiated his deal in good faith, including the no-move clause. "And are we so sure Toronto doesn't want to extend Mitch? I'm not. I think Treliving would rather extend [Marner] than trade. But they're not having those discussions yet either. It's still early, it's very premature across the board." The 27-year-old forward is eligible to sign an extension on July 1, however, there are several conflicting reports around what the future holds for Marner and the Maple Leafs entering the offseason. "They have not decided 100 percent they have to trade him and or that they're going to make life uncomfortable and they're getting the list of names. None of that's what's going on," said NHL insider Chris Johnston [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/toronto-maple-leafs/latest-news/report-maple-leafs-have-not-decided-100-percent-that-they-have-to-trade-mitch-marner] during Friday's edition of The Chris Johnston Show. Daily Faceoff's Frank Seravalli reported [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/toronto-maple-leafs/latest-news/i-just-think-theyre-going-to-back-them-into-a-corner-over-the-next-three-weeks-are-the-maple-leafs-preparing-for-a-bold-strategy-with-mitch-marner] last week that he believes Toronto will "back [the Marner camp] into a corner over the next three weeks" and tell the forward that they're moving on from him, whether now or in the future. The discourse has gotten so out of control that Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman has said [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/toronto-maple-leafs/latest-news/i-am-going-on-a-mitch-marner-moratorium-does-the-discourse-on-the-maple-leafs-star-forward-need-a-break] he's going on a "Mitch Marner moratorium" because of how difficult the topic is to discuss publicly. Treliving was asked about the Marner situation by The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun in early June [https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5541393/2024/06/04/nhl-rumblings-zegras-marner-saros/?source=emp_shared_article] and said that although they will look at every avenue, the goal is to make the Maple Leafs a better hockey team. "We’re not going to do play-by-play on it. We’ve got to look at every possible way for our team to be better," Treliving said. "Mitch controls a lot of this whole thing. If there’s a way to make our team better, we’re going to do it. But we’re certainly not going to make a trade just so we can pound our chest and say, ‘Look, we’re different.'" Marner signed a six-year contract with Toronto under former GM Kyle Dubas — which carries an annual average value of $10.903 million — on Sep. 13, 2019, while the team was in St. John's, Newfoundland, for treating camp. The forward had a down year production-wise, scoring 85 points (26 goals, 59 assists) in 69 games. He suffered a high-ankle sprain on Mar. 4 against the Boston Bruins, which forced him to miss nearly a month. Marner appeared in seven regular season games after returning to the lineup, scoring one goal and eight assists in nine games before only registering one goal and two assists in seven games during the first round of the playoffs against Boston. 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