Misplaced retort, since I would take Nylander in a heartbeat. He delivers in the playoffs. Of the "Core Four" Marner has by far the lowest impact on high leverage games. The Bedard comparison is nonsensical, since he has never been to the postseason. Marner has had countless chances to redeem himself, to show he is not a perimeter p***y that always disappears. FAILED. 13mil for that? Nope. Lucky, cuz we are not getting him anyway.
FWIW I really think Matthews is a much bigger culprit of this than Marner. Marner does his thing like always. Lots of high skill, high risk plays that occasionally come back to bite him but lead to chances for his team the vast majority of the time. Sure he doesn't mix it up in the corners or in front of the net, but that's supposed to be someone else's job.
I think if you surround him with playoff performers, he'd be fine. He could transport the puck for them and let others do the heavy part. Toronto's entire team is weak-willed and disappears come playoff time. Marner's decreased production lines up very well with the decreased scoring rate of the team as a whole. The whole organization can't play playoff hockey. He draws coverage and sets up his teammates whom instead of taking their space to drive the net send weak-sauce writers at unscreened goalies from the outside. He's the set up guy and he does that just fine in the playoffs. Throw him on a line with prime Franzen and Zetterberg and I bet you his playoff production would go up compared to his regular season stats rather than down.
Matthews just sees his game totally deteriorate. He normally boxes people out using his wide frame to buy space for his draggy wrist shot release. Come playoff time guys just body him and then stuff the shot. He doesn't push through it. Marner sets him up on the power play just like he does all regular season but then Matthews kills the chances.
Now I think there's a real question as to whether Detroit is a team that can get the most out of Marner. On one hand I think that Raymond, DBC and Kasper are feisty workers. I think MBN has the makings of a perfect complement to Marner. I think our big defenseman would do good work protecting him.
On the other Raymond, Marner, and Debrincat are all smaller dudes. I'm not sure if we want that profile to represent 3/4 of our top 6 wingers. Furthermore right now we have Kane and Berggren whom are also smaller, lighter guys. Most of our current big guys like Rasmussen are gentle giants. Larkin and our leadership seem to crumble in the big moments just like Marner's Maple Leaf teammates. Our bottom half of the lineup is complete and utter garbage, failing to contribute scoring, defensive prowess, physicality, leadership, or really anything. There's a lot of reasons to think that we'd be putting Marner in the same position to fail that has ruined his tenure in Toronto.
Personally, I'd be happy if we brought in Marner as he represents a piece that we desperately need and lack--high end skill. We'd need to recognize his flaws and try to build the right team around him.
