I would bet my mortgage that if Marner led the leafs in playoff scoring and had a couple goals but they lost for example. He’d still find a way to blame it on Marner or if the team does go in a run and Marner is outstanding he’s be in this thread telling everyone how his points don’t matter because of the location of his points. Someone like that, that to me, is a troll. Not a fan.
As for their legacy it’ll be up to individual people. I don’t really view Sundin higher than these three and I grew up in the Sundin era. These players are better. I also try to look at the whole picture. Imagine if we had a health Andersen against Montreal.. the guy quit and refused to play.we saw it in the Amazon doc. While the stars have under performed there’s been some really unfortunate mitigating factors that also factored in.
Fair enough on the first paragraph, can't imagine posting that much for a team that I don't even enjoy, but everyone has their own sense of enjoyment
as for the second paragraph, taking that Andersen example, campbell had a .934 in that series, I believe it was higher than Price. He wasn't the best in the last 3 games but he still had a .892 and a 3.00GAA. Had we won in OT his stats would rise too. I don't think andersen makes much of a difference, especially considering his game 7 performances in the past.
Looking at the whole picture shows, we've changed goalies, coaches, linemates, depth options, defencemen, and GMs for the core and they are 1-8 throughout it all in playoff runs. It's on the 5 (core 4 + rielly) guys who've been here for almost all of that. No amount of unfortunate mitigating factors should have us be out in the first round every time save for once.
Sundin played 13 rounds of hockey and won around half of them. His team made 2 conference finals and fell short there. People are always talking (not just on this board, but even just fans i've come across on the train/bus) about how "great" and "close" the sundin era leafs were even though they weren't really, It's just that everything that's come after (including this core) is worse than that. People won't be talking about Matthews and Marner for how "close" they came to winning because they never really started.
Or they will be like Hyman or Kadri, who people view as playoff studs now because they've played well outside of Toronto.
Neither of those players played even half as well as Marner or Matthews here in the playoffs.
Tkachuk is another player who sucked until he didn't when he moved teams.
Maybe, but matthews and marner won't be going to join teams as secondary pieces like those two. They'll be joining to be the best or second best players like they are now.
Tavares left his team as a respectable playoff performer, look how joining a 'better team' turned out for him and his production.
Tkachuk is a good example though, and maybe they can turn it around, but that still won't change the fact that they stunk it up everytime we got to the playoffs, Hyman 1000% gets remembered in a way that he shouldn't. Kadri couldn't play because of stupidity, but when he was playing he wasn't awful + people liked his physicality even if it costed us many times.
but enough with the hypothetical's, the playoffs are like 10 days away and that's more important than if marner does/doesn't leave
