Well said.
It's insanity before you realize it's RFA contract.
We overpaid for Nylander,but his previous contract was a steal and he made significantly less money over his Leaf career, he had his the best performance in contract year playing with Domi.Signed UFA contract.
Mitch on the other hand is riding the most ridiculous contract in RFA history, glued to Matthews, all we hear about is the amount of assists Mitch collects.
** Winger ** is not a primary position its a secondary building block where Centres, Dmen and Goalies take higher priority when building from the goalie out through strong defense, and strength down the middle,
Marner is a soft small non physical style player who has a weak shot and requires his teammates to put pucks in net to drive his points (assists) and thus his contract evaluation. Kucherov is also a winger but he puts up 144 points (100 assists) and makes $9.5 mil. Lets see Marner put up 44 goals 100 assists to earn a double digit salary, otherwise that is his contract ceiling. Never mind Tax Free state, because Marner doesn't statistically come close to Kuch, particularlly in the playoffs where he lead them in playoff scoring during 2 Cup wins.
Any player making double digit salary needs to be his own line driver to validate that contract and Marner needs to be pinned to hip of #1C Matthews or Tavares to fuel and drive his points.
Marner is essentially Robin to the teams Batman and a secondary figure in importance... In no real World should this guy be paid like an elite #1C centre like Matthews or MacKinnon or McDavid for being a teams sidekick.
How many points would Marner produce if he was playing on a line with Jarnkrok -- Domi -- Marner and attempt to drive his OWN line?
If we never had that incompetent clueless Dubas as GM we wouldn't be in this situation if our former GM understood the difference between and RFA team cost controllable contract and a open market UFA contract.
I'm hoping when the dust settles after this season that the Leafs only have 2 X double digit players Matthews and Nylander and they use their Cap space more efficiently to build a strong deep team and not top heavy team.
PS. I also realize that MLSE is in this for the money and the foolishness in which they're willing to pay Marner, doesn't come out of their pockets, but rather the fans/season ticket holders pocket for the price of addmission and because MLSE charges the highest prices for admission they also feel they need to validate those cost by putting name players on the ice to price gouge the fan base, taking advanatge of the situation.