Is the Marner Contract Good or Bad for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

The Toronto Maple Leafs ended the Marner saga with a 6-year deal.

With the 6-year deal worth $10.893.000 annually per year, the Toronto Maple Leafs pulled off the biggest heist in franchise history; fitting Marner, Matthews, Nylander, and Tavares under the salary cap. How about that, folks?

With the last big extension of the summer, the Toronto Maple Leafs are ready to take the NHL by storm in the upcoming season, no doubt. But is the Marner contract the right way to go?

Here at Editor in Leaf, some staff writers asked themselves the same question. The long-awaited end of the Marner contract saga was received with a lot of mixed emotions. That’s why for this weeks roundtable the writing staff discussed their reactions on the Marner deal.

My Take

Just when you think a magician has no tricks left, he pulls another bunny from the hat, In Dubas’s case; another extension of a big player. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the trick was good. Heck, it wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Marner is still a Toronto Maple Leaf, relieved even.

The contract, however, is horrible. Not to mention it took Dubas 3 month’s to cave and end up paying Marner what he wanted anyway, seriously? He could’ve spared everyone nerve-wracking moments and just offered him the amount from the start.

Dubas kept his word, he managed to sign them all under the salary cap, by doing that he surprised probably even himself, but he definitely dropped the ball on the last one. Marner is a $9.5 million per year winger at most, no growth in the salary cap is going to make that go away. It’s not a team-friendly deal now, nor is it going to be, ever.

One 94 points season is not enough to justify the amount Marner will now be paid the coming 6 years. Compared to contract like those of Kucherov, Kane and even Pastrnak; the Toronto Maple Leafs are overpaying Marner.

The fact to the matter is that Dubas now comes short almost $2.4 million per year to further improve the team to make them contenders, every year.

Peri Gallacher

The day deemed unlucky granted every unsuspecting Leafs fan’s wish with the final member of ‘The Big Three’ being locked in. Friday the 13th brought Me the biggest sigh of relief since The William Nylander Debacle.

At 6’ and 175lbs, Marner compensates size with his skills; with outstanding speed, puck handling, and an eye for the net. Marner is an on-ice playmaker who is eager to assist teammates; he was arguably an MVP in the past playoff runs- he’s quickly become a major role in the teams’ young core.

He’s an instant point maker and helps players on his line play better- he had 68 assists in the 2018-2019 season alone, with a career total of 157 assists- he makes plays to better the whole team.

It can be hard to see his skill and heart in contract talks when the whole media circus is yelling about how little or how much he is worth and consistently undervaluing a player who is for the team and always has been. A near duplicate situation of the Nylander trade talks but somehow more hostile.

Marner, who is nine out of ten times an easy fan favorite, became a villain in the conversations surrounding the contract, all for asking for money he deserved from a team he’s played his guts out for the three seasons he’s been playing for the team.

It’s been obvious since the start that Marner really had no interest in parting ways with his original draft organization. The right-winger landed one of the 7th highest contracts in the league at 65.358 million over 6 years and an AAV of 10.893 million dollars, also listing as the third highest-paid on the team, behind John Tavares [11 million] and Auston Matthews [11.634 AAV] – all equally paid for their talents and value to the team.

Kyle Dubas’ We Can and We Will attitude paid off; he managed to lock down three of the most talk worthy RFA’s in recent NHL history as well as curate a team that is full of players who want to be there and want to win— potentially the most cup contending group of players in over a decade.

Ultimately, all athletes are overpaid, but in the instance of the Toronto Maple Leafs, I firmly believe that Mitch Marner deserves every single penny he got in this deal. A generally unpopular opinion, but in terms relative to the Leafs and cap space aside, he’s a valuable member to the team and is fully worth the money.

Philip Van Riesen

As a saw the flow of tweets pop up on my phone about Mitch Marner’s signing a six-year contract I was astonished that the negations finally came to an end, it felt like these negations would never end.

Shortly after, the number 10.893 million was made public, seeing such a large number is something I was not pleased to see. The reason for this is when examining through the many factors that should have an influence on what Marner should receive, every metric would render that Marner is was overpaid.

Some notable factors that demonstrate Marner’s contract is an overpay include, close comparables, statistical models that predict contracts, shooting percentage regression and the problem of using points to evaluate players in the NHL, essentially, any way you look at the contract it is unwarranted that the Leafs paid Marner this much money.

But to avoid the fact that Marner could have got paid less relative to several factors, we can just ask the question, “is Marner’s on-ice value worth this amount of money throughout the length of the contract that runs through Marner’s prime years?” My answer would be, yes.

To put this into better perspective, during the Nonis era, the Leafs were paying Dave Bolland and David Clarkson the combined value of Marner’s contract, and I don’t think a soul on earth would rather pay for two aging middle-tier players over a 22-year-old Marner.

Something to remember is the Toronto Maple Leafs have locked up a phenomenal player for the next six seasons that includes the entirety of his prime.

Marner’s on-ice value should bring value relative to the contract, the disappointment is, had the Leafs paid him what his market value would be, there would be even more value. But in the end, Marner is still a Leaf and it is better to overpay core players rather than secondary players.

Alex Hobson

What’s my reaction to the Marner contract? The first would be relief, considering we don’t have to read meaningless speculation about it every day anymore.

But overall, I’m happy with the deal and I’m more so happy that we have the trio of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander locked up for the next five years at LEAST. I’m happy that Mitch signed his deal without having to miss any games of the regular season, and I’m happy with the price of the deal. Happy, happy, happy.

The fact of the matter is, the Leafs won’t have a better chance to win the cup then within the next five years. They are at a point now where they have Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Johnsson, Kapanen, Rielly, and Andersen all locked up. They have Jake Muzzin and Tyson Barrie on the back end for this year at least, and even if one or both of them leave following the season, they have Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren waiting in the wings.

Any complaint that I might have had over Marner’s contract being too high is immediately shot down over the fact that they have him locked up and they’ve assembled what I believe is the best-looking team since the early 2000s. This team has the potential to do something special this season and over the next few years, and with Marner being an integral part of this team’s success, having him locked up for it is key.

It’s a good time to be a Leafs fan

James Tanner

The Mitch Marner contract is an overpayment based on Marner’s current value and what comparable players make.

It is also an overpayment based on the percentage of the cap it takes up compared to other players who signed long term deals when their ELCs expired, and who are similar or better quality players than Marner.

However, the economics of the NHL have changed since Patrick Kane and other signed their second deals.  The Leafs are paying Marner more than he is worth today in exchange for getting what the prime of his NHL career.

The salary cap will rise – TV, gambling, and expansion are on the horizon. If it wasn’t projected to go up significantly, I highly doubt the players and league would have agreed to avoid a work stoppage, like they did last week.

Not only will the cap rise, but salaries will too.  and when that happens, the Toronto Maple Leafs will probably be getting Marner at a team friendly rate.

Even if that isn’t the case, it’s perfectly fine to overpay your elite players.  The Leafs have locked up all their best players to long term deals, and that is a fantastic thing.

The Leafs realize that you only need to pay elite players, and young players with elite upside (Johnson , Kapanen, Kerfoot).  The rest of your roster can be filled out with league minimum vets and rookies.

Since the difference between above average but non-elite players and players like Nick Shore or Jason Spezza is much smaller than the differences in their salaries, the Leafs shouldn’t see any downside at all to spending most of their money on a small core of players.

Eventually, you’ll see teams copy this model because it’s obvious that it’s going to be very successful.  The Leafs signed Marner and that’s all that matters.  It might be for too much, but not enough to care.