I’m sorry, is there a different Mitch Marner? One that’s not 26 years old and capable of putting up 99 points in a season?
He would absolutely make us contenders again. Not that there is any chance of it.
To be contenders again, they need to improve performance relative to cap hits throughout the roster.
So we gotta assess what Marner would give relative to what he'll be asking for on his next deal. Also gotta look at what would be subtracted to make room for Marner.
Then you can see how much progress is actually being made.
People talked about EK making us contenders last summer, but it only hurts you when you pay 10M (and 1.5M Petry retention) to get 6.5M or 7M value play.
Fortunately there were some net negative contracts going out the door in the EK trade, so it wasn't too bad.
But still, we saw the end result. That wasted cap space is why they missed the playoffs. Hextall deserves most of the blame for that.