Auston Matthews shares his thoughts on Mitch Marner leaving Maple Leafs

For the first time since Mitch Marner’s departure from the Maple Leafs in a sign-and-trade with the Vegas Golden Knights, Toronto captain Auston Matthews spoke publicly about what he thought of the move.

After Hockey Day in Brampton on Wednesday, a charity hockey event in the Greater Toronto Arena city to raise money to build a second hospital, Matthews took some questions from the media. And immediately – it was literally the first question he was asked – he had to touch on his longtime teammate leaving his childhood team to go play in Nevada.

Maybe it’s it being the middle of August and he isn’t being pestered after a second consecutive loss in the middle of November, but Matthews seemed to be pretty honest in response.

"We'll obviously miss him, he's a great friend and great teammate,” he said. “That's kind of the business side of it that's tough, but wish him nothing but the best. We'll just keep it moving."

While most of that is kind of what you expect from a hockey player that is trying to tread lightly and not provide an extremely juicy quote, it is more than expected.

The fact that Matthews and the rest of the current Maple Leafs will miss him, that Marner was a great friend and teammate, and it’s just the hockey business – yeah, that’s the standard stuff. But what might be the most interesting part of what the Toronto captain said was about just moving forward. It doesn’t demean any of Marner’s accomplishments in Toronto, but it does give us a peek into the Maple Leafs’ mentality heading into next season.

They aren’t going to hold on to anything in the past and truly see this is as much as a new era as possible. Most of the team is still the same, but, as general manager Brad Treliving said in the past, there was an attempt to change the team’s DNA and we will see how effective that was.