I am pretty sure thats been done. We will never know what sort of value might have been offered back unless a deal actually happens. And we won't ever know how little they would take in terms of total value back. The spectrum runs from somewhere between a 27 year old D man with elite skills to cap room. No club will offer the equivalent elite D man and the Leafs won't let him go for just cap space.
Marner is valuable but a hard sell for a million + more than his comparables so he kind of needs to go to a club that doesn't have a high paid star who is only getting actual market value. How would Forsberg feel about getting $3.5M less than Mitch? His needs/expectations greatly reduce his trade value.
100%
Nikita Kucherov is coming off a league leading 144 point regular season including 100 assists and was the 2 X playoffs leading scorer on back to back TB Cup wins recently.
That makes him the best RW in the NHL with a price point of
$9.5 mil AAV.
Leafs are already getting royally screwed paying Marner
$10.9 mil AAV for a player that has never reached the 100 point mark, and coming off a 1 goal 3 point invisible playoff series.
Marner wanting a nice pay raise to put him around $12.5 mil similar to what 2024 Hart and Lindsey trophy winner Nate MacKinnon coming off a 140 point season as a #1 Centre and 1st team all-star & recent Stanley Cup seems
beyond ridiculous on its merits alone.
Since the Salary Cap ceiling is the same for all teams, our Leafs are already using up
+$1.4 mil more then TB in this 1-1 comparison for a far inferior player statistically regular season and playoffs.
If the Leafs don't want to keep screwing themselves and hurting their own Cup competitiveness chances than
OUT is really the only reasonable option for Marner.
I don't understand how any Leaf fan that has Stanley Cup desires and/or believes MLSE does also, could endorse a Leafs re-signing putting Marner among the top players in the game, and weakening the Leafs depth and Cup chances simultaneously by overspending on under-perfoming players. .