Today Would Be a Good Day for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Sign Mitch Marner

The Toronto Maple Leafs best players are off to a great start in the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Mitch Marner scored the overtime winner as Team Canada downed Team Sweden in overtime by a score of 4-3, his Toronto Maple Leafs team-mate William Nylander also had a pretty nice game for Sweden as well.

The entire game was completely awesome and had the atmosphere of a playoff game. Since the Leafs weren't playing and didn't lose, I'd say it was better than most playoff games, actually.

I thought Team Canada was generally pretty awesome, but their defense and goaltending was definitely several levels below their forwards, which makes for a strange team.

Obviously Makar is awesome, but with Theodore getting injured and Pietrangelo skipping the tournament, and the bizarre decision to leave Evan Bouchard at home really hurt as Canada's defenseman, outside Markar, aren't great at moving the puck. As someone who has watched every Leafs game this year, it's somewhat ironic that Team Canada has the same problem: elite forwards and no puck movers to drive the play. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

A team with Crosby, MacKinnon, McDavid, Marner and Reinhart should have better puck-moving support than Dougthy, Sandheim, Parayko and Morrissey.

Today Would Be a Good Day for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Sign Mitch Marner

For anyone used to watching every Leafs game, it was certainly weird to see Mitch Marner as a complimentary player on a stacked team. He is himself an MVP level player, but Crosby, MacKinnon, Makar and McDavid are on another level - it's actually crazy once you start watching the game and you realize Marner is (at best) the 5th best guy on his team.

Overall, Marner had a great game. Not only did he score the OT winner and turn himself into a Legend, but he was one of only three Canadian forwards with a positive puck-possession rating at the end of the game.

Marner was also one of only six Canadian forwards to come out ahead in on-ice shot-percentage and he finished the game with a 53% expected goals rating and two shots.

I thought Sweden took advantage of Canada's inability to transition - especially against the Parayko Morriessey pairing - and played a very strong game in which they were the better team pretty much any time the McDavid / MacKinnon lines were off the ice.

Canada's bottom three defenseman - Morrissey, Parayko, Doughty - looked brutal, as did their entire bottom six, more or less.

Anyways, I thought it was a fun game and I can't wait to watch Team USA tonight, but the most important thing is that the Toronto Maple Leafs should use this Legend-Making Performance by Mitch Marner to announce they have signed the second-best player in Franchise History to an eight-year contract extension.