Yep, he always talked about his desire to stay, until Treliving screwed it up. Now you're making up baseless accusations that he was lying all along.
Not signing during the season doesn't imply anything you've claimed. Marner has avoided in-season signing distractions his whole career. There's also no evidence that he would only sign an overpayment. Though ironically, "didn't get the overpayment they liked last off season so they won't negotiate to try and scare the team into giving them what they want" is exactly what Nylander was reported to have done.
It's also why it is a distraction for the player, and players are allowed to not want to deal with that while they are focused on the current season.
Not signing during the season doesn't say anything about his desire to stay. There is plenty of other time to get a deal done, and GMs that are actually competent at their job would have respected and worked around that.
Team got one of the best players in the world on a surplus value contract, helping the Leafs be one of the best teams in the league throughout that contract.
He never held the team hostage, and he was never "told to go f*** himself". You have quite the imagination.
Marner has never been given a blank cheque. Would have helped to have the last guy around to get a fair deal done again, instead of Treliving sabotaging the team.
Stop blaming Marner for management's incompetence. Time for Treliving to become a big boy and take responsibility for his failures.
Words mean nothing when your actions don't say the same thing. He says what he has to get the media to stop asking him about it. He never wanted to stay and played the team acting like he did. Did the same thing Tavares did to the Islanders.
In season signing is a distraction now to the player? When it's his agent that does all that and he just has to give 20 minutes of his time to go into the office and sign the contract. Nylander held out half a season and signed for 400K more than what we reportedly wanted to sign him for. Now that's a bad GM right there. He was crucified here because he held out that long and guess who is the only one who outplayed their contract by a lot and then also signed for 8 years on his next contract.
Again, if it's a distraction to reply to a text once in a while from an agent during the season then that's just sad and pathetic. I think getting a deal over with would get rid of any distraction, especially if like you said he wants to really stay here and only here.
A player that wants to really stay somewhere gets a deal done whenever. 2 reason they don't. 1 is they don't actually want to be there and 2 is they only care about maxing out every penny they can get. Gm gave him offers that were easy to accept and get rid of those distractions and gave him an out in terms of a trade. Keep telling yourself he wanted to be here because complaining about distractions while being the one creating those distractions is just a dumb excuse for him.
A surplus? Guy finished top 10 in scoring if you go by PPG 3 of the 6 years. 8th, 8th and just recently 7th. Paid this guy like he was a consistent top 5 scorer in the league and last season was the closest he got to being that and now he wants to be paid as much as Draisatl who was a consistent top 3 scorer during that time. Enough is enough this delusion needs to stop.
That's not an imagination, that's just common sense.
Yeah it's unfortunate that guy still isn't around who signed a 80 point player to 11 million and then 2 players off their ELCs to 11+ million that weren't even 8 years. Guy put on a masterclass while he was here with their contracts.
Marners a big boy now, just like you. You can stop trying to blame the current GM because your favourite GM and player are both gonna be gone soon and can't rip the team off anymore. I hope they are giving you a raise this summer because you're working overtime lately.
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