SALT LAKE CITY — Everyone was doing so well not talking about the elephant in the room, weren’t they?
One hundred and 95 days had passed between the opening of Toronto Maple Leafs training camp — when Mitch Marner and general manager Brad Treliving jointly pulled a cloak of silence over the superstar’s contract extension talks, or lack thereof — and Saturday, when the elephant began knocking over furniture, hiding the remote, and snacking on all the good stuff from the refrigerator.
Word that (a) Marner has thus far declined his club’s initiative to engage in contract negotiations and (b) that Treliving had asked his 2024-25 MVP to waive his no-move clause for a potential Mikko Rantanen blockbuster with the Carolina Hurricanes leaked.
Now both the player and the manager have spoken on the topic.
One wouldn’t provide answers. The other refused to take questions.
What had not, by virtue of minor miracle, been an oxygen-sucking topic of the NHL hot stove (let’s give some credit to the combustible Vancouver Canucks and New York Rangers for that) for the first three quarters of the season is now ablaze.
Whether Marner — the No. 1 pending UFA by 16 miles — gets paid on July 1 is not the question here. By whom, however, feels like anyone’s guess.
“We’re aligned with Mitch, right?” Treliving said Sunday in Salt Lake City, addressing a group of cameras and reporters after practice. “We’re worried about this season. We’re worried about the games we have coming up. We want Mitch here for a long time.”
The GM, who prefaced his impromptu appearance by saying he would not be taking questions, continued.
“It’s not a distraction. We think the world of him. But it’s just not a question we’re going to get into every day. We’ve dealt with it here. We move forward. We want Mitch here,” said Treliving, praising the player’s handling of the situation.
“I support Mitch 1,000 per cent. He’s not out here on an island with this. We’re trying to win hockey games.”
Another series of quotes that begs more questions than it answers:
Why turn one day’s news into two? (Us beat reporters may have dug into, say, a Brandon Carlo feature perhaps. But when the GM speaks about the team’s best player and no one knows what that player, who holds all leverage here, truly wants… well, that’s now the story of the day.)
Not a distraction? We’ll see. Body language when teammates and the coach get asked about Marner’s uncertain future says, at the very least, that this isn’t a feel-good topic.
Is the “I support Mitch” sentiment a pitch to sway a divided fan base’s stance on who could be to blame if this all falls apart and Toronto loses its magical son for nothing? Is it a way to assure Marner himself, who might have been thrown by the trade proposal and/or having to answer a flurry of questions about it after Saturday’s loss in Colorado? Or both?
And does anyone really believe that everyone on the Leafs — whether they wear suits or skates to the office — isn’t aligned on the idea of winning hockey games and watching Marner succeed in the playoffs? C’mon.
The Marner non-distraction has diverted at least some attention from the fact that the Maple Leafs blew a lead to the worst team in hockey at home, then got the doors blown off them 5-2 and 7-4 on this tough and newsy road trip against legitimate Cup contenders Vegas and Colorado, respectively.
Coach Craig Berube, sick of the defensive mistakes and lapses in detail, held a team meeting to address the slippage in the team’s game. Some unnamed players spoke up as well.
“The past few games we haven’t really played to our identity,” Matthews Knies said. “Our record might still be half-decent, but that’s thanks to our goalies standing on their heads. We gotta play more to our identity.”
The Atlantic Division’s second-place team has a chance to get its critical bid for top seeding back on the rails Monday in Utah.
But now we have ourselves a juicy subplot.
With the previously muted noise around Marner’s march to the market now ratcheting to high volume, will he continue his 100-point-plus pace, use the headlines and doubts as fuel? Or will the elephant’s presence keep catching his mind’s eye?
This sensitive situation is not exclusively about Marner, though.
It is also very much about Treliving, who earned this job mere weeks before Marner’s full no-move protection kicked in and had no choice but to prioritize extensions for Auston Matthews and William Nylander (UFA 2024) before getting around to the Marner file.
(It’s also about president Brendan Shanahan, who signed off on all this player control in the first place. But that’s another column, another day.)
Treliving, Calgary Flames fans will recall, has already once let a franchise star walk for nothing. It was a tough look then. It could be a tougher look on July 2.
Certainly, we can’t blame the executive for trying to manage such a unique and precious asset, to scrounge for any shred of leverage he doesn’t have.
But the timing is curious, when things had been so quiet and when the P.R. portion of such a delicate debate had gone smoother than anticipated.
The stretch run, the playoffs — like it or not, they will be remembered through the prism of what the results mean for Marner and his future as a Leaf.
And for how Treliving (mis?)handled the tough hand he got dealt.
Ultimately, though, there is one way out, a path back to the silence: Winning solves everything.
On that note, Treliving and Marner are aligned. One thousand per cent.
