Marner Trade No. 2: Vegas Golden Knights
Vegas Golden Knights acquire Mitch Marner in exchange for Shea Theodore and 2024 First Round Pick
First and foremost, this trade doesn't make any sense financailly. The author dictates that the Golden Knights will just find a way to put someone on LTIR and manipulate the salary cap, but that's not going to happen, especially since the team is already over the salary cap.
The Golden Knights need to shed money this offseason and couldn't take on an additional $5.5M with Marner. Even if they did manipulate things, it seems like an impossible idea to bring in Marner right now.
From the Leafs perspective, they would never make this move.
Theodore is almost 30, and a boarder-line number-one defenseman, but this trade makes the Leafs so much worse it's hard to explain how much without sounding hyperbolic.
Basically you'd be removing a 30 goal, 100 point player who is elite defensively (and the team's best penalty killer) from the linup and adding a one-dimensional Morgan Rielly close who at the tail end of his prime.
At $5.2M, Theodore only has one-year left on his contract, so you're saving money, but trading a decade of Marner for one guaranteed year of a worse player.
What are we even doing here?
The Leafs aren't trading Marner as a cap dump. Come on.