Thanks, Tips.

I think he will. It's plainly obvious he'll never WANT to leave the Leafs, but if they sit down with him this summer and make it clear they won't be re-signing him, I think he's gonna take it really badly.

If that is the case than I see him screwing over the leafs in any trade kinda like Tkachuk did

I don't think Toronto is gonna enjoy the return for Marner

Exactly why the Leafs shouldn't trade Marner, if Marner only gives the GM the name of 2-3 cities, once the rumors spread around the Gm's table, the Leafs will be lucky to get a 1st Rd pick, a nothinburger prospect and a cash dump veteran player for him.

Otherwords the roster will be WORSE without Marner and they might be fighting for a wildcard playoff spot instead of a Divisional title.

Marner will just walk away for nothing as a UFA if Daddy Marner and his agent Darren Ferris don't get what they want.

I just don't see a path forward where ownership/MLSE enters next season with all 4 of Tavares, Matthews, Nylander, and Marner. Matthews and Nylander don't go anywhere, they just got extended. Tavares makes too much relative to production and doesn't have the upside. That leaves Marner...

...and I think he's 100% going to give a name of 2-3 teams, if that. It's not about whether the roster is just worse with Marner, it's whether you can supplement the rest of the stars that are there with the additional pieces in the return and $11M in cap space.

Even if Toronto gives away Tavares and gets just a 1st and prospect for Marner, you can do a ton with nearly $22M in additional cap space, especially if you think you can nab Montour, a top-6 forward, and a top-6 center in free agency (which you'd have ~7M each to use for each).

Kampf has less than zero value to COL and they will likely being moving cap out not taking it in. Easy no.

Trading proven establish Leaf players and placing your hopes on the summer's UFA crop is a bad idea, Dubas landed the Leafs in this hell by overpaying J.T. thus creating the %50 team cap hit goes to 4 players.

Spending $20 million on this year's UFA would look bad: just try to spend $20 million and tell me if the team is better (UFA prices would get you 3 meh star players), maybe more depth but no sure fire Cup contender.

yeah that’s fair enough, less about the destination more about moving his cap hit, I don’t pay TOO much attention to what other teams need, even if we had to attach a late pick it’s fine, but 2.4 for a 4th liner is steep

But "proven established Leaf players" don't get past the 1st round consistently, that's the whole reason Toronto is here. We've seen it 8 times with this core, how many more times do you need to see the same thing? If Toronto isn't at the stage of trying something significantly different, well...the rest of the East thanks you?

There's no such thing as a surefire Cup contender. And what even is a "meh star player"? The goal is to build a more complete team, no?

If I were Toronto, I'm looking at handing Montour a blank check, giving Tavares to anyone that'll take the full cap hit, and moving Mitch for as many tradeable assets as you can get. Use those to fill the rest of the holes.

In 7 (year 8 tbd) years the Leafs lost to 4 , I repeat FOUR Stanley Cup Finalists;

Bos-2019,
Mon-2021,
Tbay-2022,
Flo-2023.

So half the times the Leafs lost in Matthews era it was to a Cup Finalists.

And the Leafs lost to the Caps in 2017, the Caps were the 2018 Cup winners, proving how good they were.

Now losing to your BJ's-2020 was a true embarrassment.

6 out of the 8 playoffs loses were in a winner takes all deciding game, only the Caps-2017 and Flo-2023 knocked them out earlier.

So, tell me are they really that far off from contention with this core>?

Yes. Undoubtably yes.

Columbus has made the playoffs 6 times in franchise history.
2008 - Red Wings (Won the Cup)
2014 - Penguins (lost in 2nd round)
2017 - Penguins (Won the Cup)
2018 - Capitals (Won the Cup)
2019 - Bruins (Made Cup Final)
2020 - Lightning (Won the Cup)

4/6 playoff appearances we lost to the eventual champion in the first round. 5/6 we lost to a Cup finalist. I'm not delusional enough to think we were ever close to winning a Cup, or having sustained playoff success. Losing to Cup finalists does nothing to prove how good you are, the only way to do that is to win.

My takeaway here is that 75% of the time, the Leafs get extremely close to winning 25% of the games necessary to win the Cup. That's extremely far away from being a consistent contender.

Again, if the Leafs decide to run it back with a near-identical team...the rest of the East thanks you. Something significant has to change if Toronto is going to get over the hump. If 8 years of falling short with the same core doesn't tell you that, I don't know what will. 9, 10, 11 years or more certainly won't.

You have it wrong, if the Leafs are build to be a regular season team and they go make a bunch of crazy moves, they miss the playoffs and than the rest of the Eastern Conference thanks us.

Trying to build a playoff tough and ready team (their is NO proven formula) can hurt your team in the regular season. Flo and Tbay both almost missed the playoffs the year they went to the Finals. The Blues are the biggest example of this, barely a winning regular season team that becomes a Stanley Cup winner.

You also missed the part of 6 out of 8 series went the distance, proving how close to being a winner there are. The BJ's only went the full distance once and it was to the Leafs, all their series losses were embarrassments (though the sweeping of Tbay was awesome).

Also go ask MacKinnen or Ovie how many seasons it takes for world class team to finally win the Cup.

If Matthews is scoring 60 a year this team is making the playoffs. Besides, we're talking about a loaded team's 3rd and 5th(?) best players being moved. That essentially happened to Boston last season, with no assets coming back, and they still walked into the playoffs. I'm not advocating for "toughening up" necessarily, just using the cap to round out a roster that has a severe lack of depth. That could be skill, vets, ELC players, etc.

The Blues were an anomaly, an outlier. I don't give any weight to that team for making decisions.

I just don't know how people are okay with the mentality of: "6 times out of 8 we were a game away...from winning a round. We're so close!" 6/8 times they were a win away from being exactly where they ended up last season. We're not talking about game 7 in the ECF or SCF, we're talking about game 7 in the 1st round.

The best thing a GM can do is give the team as many chances at going deep into the playoffs as possible. If you try the same formula 8 times and get the same result, it's time to change the formula.

The formula is slowly changing with the new GM, sadly this was truly a lame duck season because Keefe was left to be the fall guy. Similar to Dubas getting stuck with Lou's coach, Babcock and Dubas had to at least give Babs 1 lame duck season before handpicking the replacement of his choice.

I strongly believe Tre and Keefe were never bbf's like Keefe and Dubas.

Slow and steady. I know we all can say another year wasted of Matthews prime year but... looking at Tre, he doesn't rush and panic. He made that mistake as a rookie GM, signing meh star players to really bad UFA contracts (M. Raymond, M. Stone, K. Ramo, T. Brouwer, J. Neal). Imagine trading away Marner/JT away just to use the cap space for those depth players, easily miss the playoffs with that decision, lol

It's scary to see Tre throwing $$$ around to UFAs Coleman, Kadri, Tkachuck, Huberdeau, Weegar, Matthews, Nylander.

You know what, I do agree with you there, that's a valid point. But to be fair, he has hit on a couple UFAs/extensions: Weegar, Gio (in Calgary), Tanev...maybe it's fine as long as he sticks to defensemen!

I hope for Dmen, he realizes that bigger, meaner players doesn't make you better.

Beniot/McCabe/Edmundson/Lybushkin were all useless in moving the puck that it obviously hampered their offensive.

Avs would have no interest in Kampf but could see them going for Gregor. I've always thought he'd be a good fit on the Avs.