Toronto Maple Leafs should extend both Tavares and Marner

Toronto Maple Leafs fans have been looking at July, 2025 as a potential new chapter for this organization, but in reality, they should hope that everything stays the same.

The Toronto Maple Leafs core-four isn't the problem. You may think that it is because this group has only won one playoff round in eight years, but they're also the same group who has consistently made the playoffs year-after-year.

Fans of the Washington Capitals were itching for change for more than a decade before the team ultimately won the Stanley Cup, because they couldn't even reach an Eastern Conference Finals with Alex Ovechkin and company. However, they never budged, and they ultimately got that championship with the same core they started with. The only big change they made was a coaching move, which is what Toronto hopes is the difference.

Just because you haven't got the job done, doesn't mean that it can't happen. We are now entering Year 9 of the Auston Matthews Era and if the Leafs won the Cup this year, it would be four years earlier than Ovechkin. We still have until 2028 until they would tie Ovechkin's mark, which means the team should continue to keep Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares until then.

Toronto Maple Leafs should extend both Tavares and Marner

We can point fingers at the core-four for not scoring, but the reality of the situation is that the Leafs have lost in a multitude of different ways over the last eight years, and their overall lack of playoff success was extremely improbable.

I know that it may sound crazy to bring the same people back, but I think this is the classic "it's not always greener on the other side" moment. When times are tough, we sometimes look to make drastic changes, when in fact, the real solution is right in front of us. The entire point the Leafs made when they first drafted Matthews and hired Kyle Dubas was that the process is more important than the results, which vary.

When you hear the core-four speak, you can hear their passion and desire to win in Toronto. They don't want to win anywhere else and John Tavares' understood that when he appointed Matthews as captain. He sacrificed his pride because he knew it was best for the team and as a result, that commrodery and friendship should stay together as long as possible.

The media gets upset at Marner, although he's a top-three player in Leafs history, and then bashes Tavares, who came home when nobody thought he would. The organization should not let that noise distract them and they should try to extend Marner and Tavares for as long as possible.

If Tavares can take a friendly discount at $4-7M, while Marner also stays around $11M, as the salary cap rises, this team can add pieces and improve. However, this core is good enough to get the job done and we unfortunately just have to be paitent, although it's almost impossible to do.