He’s a 50 goal, 90 point franchise center at 22 years old. The incident probably cost him the captaincy but that’s it. They aren’t moving him, he’s the face of the franchise. It’d be like the Oilers moving McDavid. Just from perusing twitter and reading some articles, a lot of the fans ire seems to be directed towards Marner. He’s probably got the worst contract on the team and he went through a very contentious and public negotiation.
They were Jekyll and Hyde all season. Got off to a terrible start that got Babcock fired, rebounded for a long stretch after Keefe took over, then hit the skids again. They probably deserved a better fate against Columbus, but they shot something like 1.6% at even strength in the series. There’s just *something* bad in the mix, although it’s worth noting that this core has been an underdog in each series they’ve lost (Washington, Boston, Boston) until this one which was more of a coin flip. They just seem to always make back breaking mistakes at the worst possible time each and every time. Tavares hitting the post in the first period. The circus line change and Andersen softy that made it 2-0.
The flat cap hurts them more than any other team, in my opinion. They already have $76.9 million committed to 17 players next year. They’ll need to replace Barrie (what a disaster of a trade that was) and Ceci who weren’t any good but played in their top 4. They have internal options like Sandin and Liljefren on ELC’s still but those guys haven’t really broken in as regulars so counting on them in top 4 or 6 roles isn’t ideal for a team that wants to be a Cup contender. Flat cap in 2021/2022 too which is when they’ll need to extend Rielly and make a decision on Andersen.
I think they’ll resist doing anything to the big 4 right now. They’ll try some LTIR shenanigans again and I think move out some of the depth guys making decent money like Kapanen, Johnsson and Kerfoot. If they win the lottery here in a few minutes, maybe that frees them up to move Marner or Nylander. Their depth with suffer though. They don’t have a great farm system and if they lose the lottery tonight they won’t have a first round pick for the 2nd consecutive season which isn’t ideal. Nick Robertson is promising and could probably replace one of the middle 6 wingers, but I don’t think they have much else up front to be excited about.
It is going to be an interesting summer (fall, I guess?) up in Toronto.