Our PK hasn't been terrible every playoffs, and Marner is far from the issue when it has struggled.
You should care that he's a top producer and player on the team. More than just the highest producing center on your team matters.
Not that it matters which are higher/lower scoring, but that's not even true. Game 1 is our 2nd lowest scoring game after game 7. Your claims about production effects are wrong.
You're blaming an individual for something that isn't an individual issue, and even more odd, you're focusing on the guy primarily in charge of the thing we tend to do quite well, and not the guys who primarily do the thing we're struggling with.
People here blame whatever fits their narrative, and then make suggestions that don't fix anything, and often hurt the team. Moving Marner doesn't improve anything. It gives opportunity to address something, which Treliving has shown he will waste. And even if it was addressed, it still wouldn't improve the team overall. Opening holes to close other holes doesn't advance you ahead.
You mean elite goalie runs don't last forever? Wow, what a surprise! Not to mention that all of your numbers are wrong.
Toronto scored 16 goals against Price. That's the same as Tampa (16), and more than Vegas (13) and Winnipeg (6).
Toronto scored 22 goals against Vasilevsky. That's more than Colorado (20), New York (14), and Florida (3).
Toronto scored 10 goals against Bobrovsky, and while Vegas got to see the implosion side of Bobrvosky after he didn't play for like 10 days, Carolina (6) still scored less than us.
I'm not sure why you're attempting to misrepresent us as the only one that has experienced this.
Even if your argument was accurate, the only thing it would say is that we're slightly worse than cup-winners.
We're not reliant on 1 line, but removing Marner would help turn us into that. Cup winners aren't made by overpaying depth.
Ignored? It's like this board's catchphrase. People love to pretend it means way more than it does, and then what they actually ignore is all other information and context. We're not accumulating series here. This isn't Pokemon, trying to catch them all. Unless you win 4 series in one season, all it means is that you lost in a slightly different way.
No we didn't. What are you even talking about?
Crosby, Ovechkin, Malkin, McDavid, Matthews, Kovalchuk, Vanek, Nash, and Heatley. Behind everybody who earned more than him. Behind a few who didn't earn more than him. Ahead of those he earned more than. In other words, a reasonable contract.
The last time our PK was above 80% in the playoffs was in 2020/21 when we played a non playoff team in Montreal. The other time was against a Columbus team that wasn't a playoff team either. Since Marner got put on the PK our PK in the playoffs has been awful. Dubas brings in Kampf and Jarnkrok and we're told they are very good PKers and it'll help. Well, our PK still sucks and Marner is one of the main PKers. So yes, I'd say he's a big part of that issue apparently.
I don't care that he's a top producer on our team when we have Matthews and Nylander already. We got excited having them all when we drafted them all and thought we were finally gonna make cup runs and even win some, but they didn't make any kind of cup run and have won nothing. Can't even win a regular season trophy for most points during the season as a team. All I care about is this team making runs now unless they are rebuilding.
Following the same script since Keefe took over. Usually get blown out Game 1 then we blow them out and then games 3-4 are usually 4-3 games and then we can't even score 2 goals.
I'm not blaming Marner. I do blame him for taking more money than he deserved and then when we needed him most to score in elimination games he becomes a ghost. The main issue wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have so much cap tied down to 4 forwards. Do we really expect to keep signing guys to league min deals who don't score much to suddenly just out of the blue help our depth scoring in the playoffs? Marner is just on the last year of his deal and he could easily get us back a 2nd line C that would set us up perfectly for Tavares to drop down to 3C and get a much lower cap hit on his next deal, unlike Marner.
He'll waste? 2 of our leading scorers in the playoffs were because of him. One of our better defenders and budget players was because of him. Samsonov earned another contract here because of his previous season and we only gave him a 1 year deal so idk how that's a waste. Reaves and that 4th line the 2nd half of the season was great and in the playoffs as well. Robertson, Holmberg and Jarnkrok were garbage considering they were supposed to be our best depth scorers. Not guys Tre brought in. That top paid player though didn't take over once again though. Trading a guy taking up 11 million of our cap space himself and even more on his next deal to put elsewhere in the lineup doesn't create holes. It actually patches up all the holes we have. Our offence didn't die when Mitch got hurt, in fact it gave someone like McMann a bigger role and I'd say he did what we knew he could do and that was score goals. Matthews production didn't get hurt playing with Domi and Bertuzzi either. So what holes do we create exactly with Marner gone?
Montreal went to 7 against us and only 5 with Tampa Bay. 2 less games to score the same amount of goals on Price. They all played fewer than 7 games and what did Florida do after that series? traded their top point producer who happened to be a playmaking winger as well. Even traded their top dman with him. Carolina was without one of their top forwards in Svech and Patches who was their FA signing to help their goal scoring issues. Aho was their only legit player at that time and Necas was just starting to breakout. These teams also don't pay the prices we do for goalscoring and are scoring close to us or more than us in less games played. Looks like we don't need all 4 of Matthews, Nylander Marner and Tavares when other teams are doing this with players who aren't paid more than 9 mil at the time.
Actually a lot of cup winners do overpay on depth, especially since their top 6 isn't filled with 11 million dollar players. They'll usually have their 2 highest forwards and then a few 3-6 mil players around them and throughout the lineup and then the league min guys. We could also do that if we just moved 1 player and waited for the other to get his lower AAV contract after next season. It's also funny looking at past cup winners and seeing them win with players who people on here would consider a bad player and who would make our team worse.
See now you just trying to throw sentences together that just make zero sense to defend your little narrative. Trying to claim others ignore information and context when the information and context is all over the TVs and Internet every year when we lose. Is that not clear enough info and context for you when it shows we lost a series 4-3? Then when people say our big players ghost in elimination games and y'all will try and go with the you can't make it to those games if they aren't scoring in the 1st 3 games. Like come on now. All we wanted was this core who was said to be our best ever to make cup runs and the furthest they made it to was the 2nd round and got embarrassed in 5 games. Plenty of info and context that shows this core just isn't it and paying them all what they wanted was a mistake. It's the world we live in with a cap system. You are going to have to move on from elite players when things aren't working out. If they were consistently making runs and going to the 2nd or 3rd rounds then it's easy to argue why we should keep them, but they aren't. Maybe stop relying so much on your deserve to win meters and xGF% and all that and see what's happening right in front of your eyes on the TV every playoffs. How many times do you gotta say if we played them again we would win and then go on and lose again for you to realize something isn't working?
Yes we did. We traded away Engvall. We traded away Sandin. The rest of the guys we traded for we didn't really give up players for and they just took over roster spots from the players who were there all season. Acciari, Lafferty and O'Rielly are the 3 I remember on forward ad Schenn and McCabe on defence.
Those 1st 5 names Marner shouldn't even be close to. Vanek was very overrated but he was averaging around 40 goals his last 2 seasons on his ELC so it makes sense why they paid him, especially after Drury and Briere left and that team looked like it was on the downfall after a few good runs. Kovalchuk another who only gets that contract because Atlanta only had him and Heatley and Heatley left after his ELC was up and I'm assuming got traded for Hossa. I can't remember exactly. Was also averaging around 40 goals a year his last 2 seasons on his ELC. Final year of his ELC led that team in scoring by 30+ points too. They paid him because he was that teams only bright spot and it was after the lockout year so idk if that had anything to do with it. Heatley got 11.54% of the cap off his ELC for 3 years and then signed for 14.91% of the cap after having career years in those 3 seasons averaging 50+ goals and 100+ points. Rick Nash is another who got overpaid because he was a rookie leading his team in scoring on a team that looked like it had no future and they didn't. Poor guy didn't even get to really play any playoff hockey until he left for the Rangers. So I mean sure. If you want to group him in with the 3 who were also overpaid then I guess you can say it was a reasonable contract. I'm sure if Marner was playing for a team and he was the only good rookie that team had and lead them in scoring and didn't really have any playoff hopes then maybe you can justify him being overpaid.