Marner to Utah?
Utah has been in the league for just about a month now after relocating from Arizona.
With the likes of Clayton Keller, Lawson Crouse, Sean Durzi, and Connor Ingram, they have a lot of enticing pieces that Toronto could acquire in a Mitch Marner deal.
The number one target would be Clayton Keller. Born in Arizona, Keller was drafted to the Arizona Coyotes in 2016, the same draft as Auston Matthews.
Both Matthews and Keller grew up in Arizona and played on the U18 US development program together in 2015.
An all Arizona line of Clayton Keller, Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies would be the first of it's kind and would also dominate their opponents offensively.
Keller is a skilled winger with both elite playmaking and finishing ability. He has been a point per game player the last three seasons and is defiantly Utah's best player.
He is not as gifted as Mitch Marner but he is signed at a very fair $7.15M for the next four seasons.
Marner would single handedly make Utah a potential playoff team in their first season and Keller is a highly skilled, first line left winger, at a lower cap hit, under team control for four more years.
The move frees up $3.78M in cap space for Toronto, which can be used to help acquire a defenseman in free agency. Although it should at least be mentioned that the Leafs don't really need the cap space, and even if they could re-allocate Marner's money, it would be next to impossible to get better value than they are getting from Marner himself.
Still, Keller for Marner, while a huge loss, seems to be about the best the Leafs could do under the circumstances.