Potentially but that's a pretty pessimistic view of things. Presumably you hope that he just continues to get better year over year, score clutch goals, and steal playoff games for us. Optimistically he's the best 2C in the game for 8 years.
The problem is we are comparing (and praising) Nylander scoring 3 goals because the rest of the core isn’t. So sure, it looks fantastic when the other guys have 1 each.
What about the ‘67 Leafs ? They had 9 players over 30 and their goalies were 36 and 40 years old. Different era obviously.
That’s because he doesn’t have the heart of those players. None of them do.
Or don’t sign JT. Keep Kadri who’d scored 30 goals two years in a row and use the extra $6.5M to sign a good dman. And on top of that save money on Matthews and Marner’s next contracts who knew they were already better players than JT and insisted on being paid like it.
They’re paid too much of the salary cap. That’s not the players fault but it’s the main reason why they can’t win with them as a group besides being soft ass players who can’t score in the playoffs.
Except he’s not a solid two way centre anymore. He’s a one way opportunistic scorer and faceoff guy who is slow, doesn’t check well and has no physical side to his game. It would be better if they made a clean break and found someone younger, bigger and faster.
And traded for Rodrigues from Pittsburgh in the Kapanen trade and then didn’t bother qualifying him that summer so Pittsburgh re-signed him as a free agent. Hyman, Rodrigues and Verhaeghe would sure look good in Leaf uniforms right now.
Have you seen Connor Brown the last few games? Do we have anybody comparable in our bottom 6?
The problem is that he has been getting better year over year, he has been scoring clutch goals, and he has been stealing playoff games for us.
It gets even worse if you look at "when the series gets tighter in games 5, 6, and 7".
Over that 6 year period, he has certainly outperformed Marner.
However he didn’t say pedestal he said God. If that was just an isolated incident it could be explained away but when added to all his other petulant interviews it speaks to his general sense that he can do no wrong
Not even close
They sure would but we can’t afford them because of the core 4
Er, I think that when someone refers to someone as "a god" that's pretty much the definition of putting them on a pedestal. I get that he's talking about kids and adoring fans, but don't think you've really redefined anything here that changes my argument. That he's a bit of a dolt doesn't change the fact that he never seems to demonstrate much in the way of humility, which is part of why my central argument is that his ego is a central driving force in the lockerroom and in management. He never takes responsibility in front of the media, remember when Keefe had to apologize for calling out the core for a bad game? It ain't Nylander who was calling his agent after that one!
I'd argue some of that had to do with Marner being targeted by Babcock. Mitch and his camp were under the expectation that the Leafs would be retaining Babcock's services until 2023 after the guy had signed a first of its kind 8-year $50M contract. The incident in his rookie season, where he was tasked with ranking his teammates' work ethic, is something that could have turned him into a pariah and also something that doesn't seem like an isolated incident either. Unlike Keefe, Babcock rarely gave Marner and Matthews ice time together and I'm assuming that aforementioned ego / lack of humility really got in the way of contract negotiations ala "if he (Babcock) stays here, I'm gonna ask for a million more" or something to that effect.
