Toronto Maple Leafs right wing Mitch Marner looks up at the crowd during the second period of a game against the Minnesota Wild, Nov. 3, in St. Paul, Minn. If there’s any doubt about the Leafs getting better with an extended Marner contract, then they should know what they have to do. Not just pass on Marner, but replace him with someone (or maybe two someones) better suited to their needs.Adam Bettcher/The Associated Press
When Steven Stamkos chose to leave the Tampa Bay Lightning over the summer, he seemed to feel they had done him dirty.
“Fell short,” was how he described negotiations with his former team. “Not by my trying, that’s for sure.”
Stamkos made it sound like he was being shoved out the door of a steel mill after 40 years, rather than moving to Partyville, USA to make 130 times the median wage.
Tampa kept it classy. In its public statements, it almost managed to make it sound as though it regretted how it had turned out.
When Stamkos and the Nashville Predators rolled back into town a few days ago, the Lightning made the night about him. Except for the game part of it. Tampa won.
A year ago, the book on the Lightning was that their time was over. They were still better than average, but all that meant is that it was going to take them ever longer to get back to contending. They hadn’t won a playoff round in two years. They even lost to the Maple Leafs.
All the high-end talent they were still holding on to – Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy – was functionally being wasted on a no-hoper.
Not any more. After returning worn-out Steven Stamkos and getting a younger, hungrier version, Jake Guentzel, the Lightning are a force again.
By swapping out one key spot, they managed to do subtraction and addition at the same time. Six Tampa skaters are currently in the top 40 in scoring.
This renewed vigour isn’t translating into a million wins, but the Lightning know better than anyone that the NHL regular season is meaningless. The important thing is how they look – alive again.
How’re the Predators doing? Worst record in the league. You know they’re alive because they twitch occasionally.
It could once be said that a team owed its players something. The Red Wings owed Gordie Howe. In his heyday, they paid him about the same amount of money as a GP to make Michigan the hockey capital of the world. Some consideration was due when he began to flag.
These days, your salary is more than enough of a reward. Pros can’t be mercenaries when they’re in their prime, and then members of the family when they lose a step. It’s one or the other.
In letting Stamkos go, the Lightning proved the ‘Ronin’ rule – whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt.
I’m sure that in a perfect world they wanted Stamkos back. But at US$8-million a year? Yeah, no. More important, the Lightning were not getting better with Stamkos on the team. They were getting worse. At any amount, he was the wrong choice.
Across the Florida peninsula, the Panthers had a similar decision to make – whether to give Sam Reinhart a raise.
Reinhart does not fit the stereotype of a cap-pressurizing free agent – he’s a winger; he’d disappointed in Buffalo; he’d never scored more than 33 goals in a season before the last one, when he scored 57.
But when Reinhart was great, so was Florida. The Panthers re-signed him to an eight-year extension a few hours before he entered free agency.
Will that deal look good in seven or eight years’ time? Almost certainly not. But it looks amazing right now. And now is when Florida is the early favourite to win another title.
That’s the best guide for whether to re-sign your own player – if you’re moving backward, change. If you’ve got forward momentum, stay as you are.
The Vancouver Canucks gave Elias Pettersson an eight-year, US$93-million deal six months ago. Pettersson is in that ‘should be great’ range – a centre, still young (25), was a monster early in his career. But he wasn’t getting better lately, and neither were the Canucks.
This season, Pettersson looks like a man who plays hockey as a condition of his bail. He’ll have one good game, get his chit signed and then disappear for four nights. If the Canucks are heading into Leafs’ territory – a hypothetically great team that doesn’t translate into reality – the Pettersson extension will be the signing that defines that.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why teams sign guys they know intimately despite their doubts – fear.
As a GM, you can’t just let a Stamkos go. You have to replace him with a Guentzel. That’s hard work and, if it goes wrong, that’s all on you.
It’s easier to re-sign your own guy and say, ‘Everyone knows how much he brings to the table’, even if all the guy does is eat. The important thing is that you can get everyone to agree that you made the correct call, even though it turned out incorrectly.
It’s common in the NHL to see executives praising the roster calls of their direct competitors, often unprompted. You won’t find this tendency in baseball or football. It’s pervasive in hockey because everyone wants the same protection for their own timid decision making when the time comes.
This is the prism through which the Leafs’ decision with Mitch Marner can be viewed. Are they Stamkos’ing, Reinhart’ing or Pettersson’ing?
Marner’s had a good start. He’s a lock to make Team Canada for the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. Around March, odds are he’ll be looking like a top-10 or top-20 player in the league.
But are the Leafs getting better? Does anyone doubt they will start getting better if they give Marner the giganto contract he is expecting? Beyond considerations of individual talent, is the Leafs’ mix right? Because this is their last chance to change it.
If there’s any doubt about any of that, then there you go. The Leafs should know what they have to do. Not just pass on Marner, but replace him with someone (or maybe two someones) better suited to their needs.
But because Toronto is Toronto and not Tampa or Florida – winners of three of the past five championships – one has some concerns the gutsy choice will ever supersede the easy one.
