1specter
Registered User
- Sep 27, 2016
- 12,056
- 18,032
And where did I say otherwise? That's exactly my point genius. We tried a hard negotiation with Nylander and got him on a good deal, but bent for Matthews HOWEVER Matthews is a tier above Marner and even at the time with his goal scoring prowess and the fact that he played C he would've definitely had offer sheets had he hit RFA. When Dubas caved into Marner that was the straw that broke the camel's back and also created a false perception that Marner is on the same level when he is not. After what happened with Marner there was no way Nylander was going to be the one to take less again especially when comparing playoff performances.LOL Willy and Matthews signed first! Marner signed after both those guys.
I don't disagree with the rest of what you are saying, but some of your examples are also wrong. Many of those guys got paid a fair deal for what they were worth at the time, MacKinnon's contract aged well because he didn't perform that great on his ELC and didn't break out until 4-5 years into his career as a superstar whereas someone like Rantanen went straight to 9M/yr after ELC because of how well he performed. In many of these cases as well you could make the arguments that many of these players had comparable impacts to each other, whereas Matthews has clearly been the best of the 3.And I’m sorry to break it to you, but this became about money long before Marner’s extension. When Matthews decided he wasn’t going to sign his ELC until August so he could get his bonus and when the Leafs decided that one guy would get a bonus and the other wouldn’t it made it about money.
The leafs have no one to blame but themselves. When you have 2 or more guys who are all elite you have to treat them equally or the same.
LA treated Kopitar and Doughty the same. Chicago treated Kane and Toews the same.
Pittsburgh treated Malkin and Crosby the same and when they didn’t, Crosby always had Malkin’s back to ensure he was treated the same as him.
Colorado treated MacKinnon the same as Landeskog and Rantanen.
Edmonton treated Draisaitl the same as McDavid.
Tampa treated Hedman, Vasi, Stamkos, Kucherov the same.
No one was more important than the other. Their negotiations were similar and expectations for each were similar. Toronto made a mess the moment they treated Nylander differently than Marner and Marner differently than Matthews. We can thank Lou for that. The message that being Leaf is more important than the individual should have been preached better, not 1 month before their ELC’s were about to expire.