In the aftermath of another hollow spring, all kinds of talk — and no small amount of shouting — has been focused on the future of pending free agent Mitch Marner.
And despite what angry Toronto sweater-tossers would tell you, all 32 clubs — including the only one that’s ever provided Marner a paycheque so far — will have some level of interest until the moment he puts pen to paper on a new deal.
Marner entered the league with his hometown team in 2016 and, since that season, only seven players — Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Nathan MacKinnon, Nikita Kucherov, Artemi Panarin, David Pastrnak and Sidney Crosby — have tallied more points than the 741 posted by the fourth overall pick in the 2015 draft.
Marner, who just turned 28, was a Selke finalist in 2023 and — scoff if you will — has never missed the playoffs in a nine-year career.
Now, he’s about six weeks away from being able to sign with any team in the league.
While it’s too early to close the door on a return — Leafs coach Craig Berube “100 per cent” wants Marner back — it sure feels like the writing is on the boards here and, after another excruciating spring, Marner will turn the page and search for a different kind of work-life balance in a new locale.
Of course, while Mitch Marner, free agent is going to attract all kinds of attention, some landing spots are more logical than others.
With that — and with the assumption Marner won’t be inking a new deal with Toronto — let’s run down the still-lengthy list of teams that could go hard at the type of player who rarely hits the open market.
If any team can relate to the Leafs’ throbbing pain of banging your head against the wall every spring, it’s L.A. The club that has dropped four straight first-round series to the Edmonton Oilers just changed general managers — bringing in former Oilers boss, Ken Holland, in fact — and is surely primed to make a splash.
The need for scoring — and bringing in players who can help with that — has been an organizational theme in L.A. for 15 years. In 2012, the club made a swap with Columbus to acquire Jeff Carter; two years later, L.A. went back to the Columbus well to snag Marian Gaborik, who wound up leading the playoffs in goals in 2014 as L.A. won its second title in three years.
Were Carter (who was sulking in Ohio) or Gaborik (a one-dimensional, often-injured winger) perfect players when L.A. got them? Certainly not. But they made a huge difference in the plight of the Kings.
The bones of this L.A. squad may not be quite as sturdy as those championship-level teams from 2012 and 2014, but there’s no doubt the Kings are a team that could hit a whole other level with an injection of raw talent.
From Marner’s perspective, L.A. would seem to be as appealing a fit as any team we’ll touch on today. You can see the potential for deep playoff runs while your family lives a fantastic California life.
Expect the Kings to be among the first to call Marner’s camp.
Is L.A. still a bit too close to Canada for you? Then let’s move a bit south to Orange County.
The Ducks fired coach Greg Cronin after the season and replaced him with Joel Quenneville, a move that lent credence to ownership’s insistence that this is the summer to open up the wallet and spend in Anaheim.
On the ice, the Ducks made a big leap from 59 to 80 points this season. But, obviously, when a coach loses his job — and when a team hasn’t seen the post-season since 2018 — nobody is satisfied.
Anaheim has good young players or prospects at every position. Of all the non-playoff teams that could take a run at Marner, it feels like the Ducks — and another one we’ll mention soon — can make the best case for being competitive in the immediate future.
That’s especially true if No. 16 joins the squad.
Utah Mammoth
New name, new star?
Utah made a big splash in its first summer as a franchise last year — empowered GM Bill Armstrong traded for Mikhail Sergachev from Tampa — and there’s a universal expectation Utah will go big-game hunting again.
Mammoth fans can credibly dream of a world where they pursue Marner as a UFA and pair that move with a splashy trade or second big-time UFA signing.
Salt Lake City holds appeal as a place to settle and the team — which was in the Western Conference playoff hunt until the late stages of the season — is on the upswing.
As always, the Knights must be mentioned any time a high-profile player can be had. Add to that Vegas’ need for help on the wing and you start to wonder if there’s a perfect marriage here.
The Knights are the first team we’ve mentioned that would have to massage the roster a bit to create some space for Marner, but we know anything is in play when this club gets ruthless. If that means moving an “Original Misfit” like William Karlsson to clear nearly $6 million in cap space, then that’s what it takes.
The fact Vegas has won one playoff series in two years since claiming the 2023 Cup means hunger levels will be extra high in the desert.
Watch out.
Until now, we’ve exclusively mentioned Western Conference clubs and it does seem like the more logical fits are on that side of the draw.
Still, there’s an obvious connection in Pittsburgh in that the deal Marner played on for six years was inked by former Leafs GM — and current Pens boss — Kyle Dubas.
Pittsburgh doesn’t want to tear it down and has been re-tooling on the fly. What better way to move the puck forward than adding Marner to play with Sidney Crosby for the final years of Sid’s career?
It’s impossible to know how Marner would feel about joining a team that’s been trending down as opposed to up, but Crosby is always a draw and there’s a clear personal connection there in Dubas.
We might as well address the other potential pre-existing connection before going any further. Brendan Shanahan — president of hockey operations for the Leafs for the past decade — is talking to the Islanders about a similar position there this week.
Like Marner, Shanahan is at the end of his contract with Toronto and there’s a strong sense the relationship has run its course.
Could an Isles organization with new leadership at the top — a GM is coming at some point to replace Lou Lamoriello — use winning the draft lottery as motivation to put the hammer down, draft a stud first overall in June, then add a 100-point player in free agency a few days later?
That would sure spice things up on Long Island.
And could you imagine if, seven years after John Tavares departed New York for Toronto, Marner did the opposite?
Frustration is growing in Colorado, where the team has won just a single playoff round since claiming the 2022 Cup. Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar are super-duper star players still at the height of their powers and both just won the 4 Nations Face-Off with Marner, where the latter was a very important player for Canada.
If Colorado can’t find the 2C it has been in search of since Marner’s one-time teammate Nazem Kadri left Denver, maybe the Avs just pivot to a play-driving winger to make the second line sing — especially if MacKinnon is drawing the tough assignments on the first line.
The Avs would have to re-arrange the books a bit to make this work and, surely, some portion of the fanbase would question the logic of essentially letting Mikko Rantanen leave, then signing Marner for (presumably) similar dollars.
But we are where we are, and Colorado is a great team looking for something to help it get back to the top.
The Hawks are on the hunt to make this team better NOW, pure and simple. You could definitely see Chicago cutting a blank cheque here and telling the player nobody is going to pay more for him.
Again, it’s hard to know how Marner would feel about joining a team that appears very far from real contention, but Chicago is an all-time sports city and boasts a bevy of good, young players in the mix already with Connor Bedard.
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We didn’t want to touch on the Canes too early because they’re still very much in the hunt for the Cup and it’s hard to know what summer priorities will be. That said, if Carolina loses out in the conference final and the bugaboo is, once again, the team’s inability to find goals, you have to think the Hurricanes are making a serious pitch.
We know there’s recent history here, as Carolina and Toronto discussed a potential Rantanen-for-Marner swap ahead of the deadline. Ultimately, the Canes dealt Rantanen to Dallas after — as was his right — Marner enacted his no-trade protection to nix the deal.
It’s completely understandable why a player would do that at any point, and especially in the middle of a season’s stretch run. But just because you don’t want to uproot your family on the fly to move to North Carolina doesn’t mean you wouldn’t consider that part of the world — one many players adore living in — in a different context.
We had to save a wild card for last. The Caps had an incredible season that ended in second-round disappointment. Alex Ovechkin is back next year for his age-40 season on a contract that runs out in July, 2026.
Maybe he’s back for more, maybe that’s the end.
Either way, the offensive engine of this team is leaving soon and it could use Marner now to help get over the hump with Ovi still playing and later to make sure the scoring doesn’t dip too much when the greatest goal-scorer of all-time hangs ’em up.
The Caps would need a bit of salary maneuvering to make this happen, but nothing crazy.
Washington smoked the off-season last year — could the Capitals do it again?
