A Comparative View of Mitch Marner’s Demands of the Toronto Maple Leafs

Mitch Marner and the Toronto Maple Leafs are divided on what they feel is fair compensation. We will explore the player contracts that near his pay demands.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Mitch Marner have reportedly been far apart in negotiations. The club would surely like to sign their star restricted free agent winger, but it appears as though both parties cannot agree on either the term or value of a deal.

Bob McKenzie has shared that Marner is not interested in taking any contract that nets him a lesser AAV than his teammate Auston Matthews. This information has obviously not been shared publically by Marner’s camp or the Leafs, but has been discussed by NHL “insiders”. For the purposes of this article, we will consider the reports to be accurate.

According to CapFriendly, Matthews owns the third-highest cap hit in the NHL. While his contract is front-loaded, paying him $15.9 million in the first two years, it drops to $7.95 million in his fifth and final year. That works out to an AAV of $11.634 million.

The only players who have a higher average salary than Matthews are Connor McDavid and Artemi Panarin. Their AAVs are $12.5 million and $11.642 million respectively. This means that Marner is telling the Maple Leafs that he deserves to be paid like a top-three player in the league.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Mitch Marner

One may argue that players such as John Tavares, Steven Stamkos, and Sidney Crosby provided discounts to their current teams, but their deals still help set the market for their NHL colleagues. Both agents and general managers will identify comparable players, in terms of their value to the team and production, to help determine fair wages.

The question for Kyle Dubas and the Maple Leafs must be, where does Marner rank in the league? He certainly isn’t in the top three. Is he in the top five, ten, fifteen, or twenty? EA Sports, the makers of NHL20 certainly don’t think so. They recently revealed their top 50. Marner owns the 37th best rating in the game.

https://twitter.com/EASPORTSNHL/status/1168656545371963392

Perhaps Marner deserves better. If general managers rank him in their top 20, how does this correspond to his salary? Darren Dreger tweeted that Marner’s camp rejected an $11 million AAV over seven or eight years. That happens to equal Tavares’ deal, the sixth-highest player in the league.

The next best-paid players are earning $10.5 million. Those are Jonathan Toews, Carey Price, and Patrick Kane. The tenth highest AAV belongs to Anze Kopitar at $10 million. While contract value is not directly correlated to their overall ranking in the league, Dubas and his executive team have surely had the discussion on whether Marner should be paid like a top ten player in the league.

Based on the Toronto Maple Leafs willingness to give Marner Tavares money, clearly they’re willing to admit that he is an elite player who might just be one of the best in the NHL. He did after all finished the 2019 season with 94 points (26 goals and 68 assists), placing him as the 11th highest scorer in the league.

While speculation and rumours will continue to fly until Marner signs a contract, hopefully, that time comes ahead of the start of the season for both the player and the team.