Nope, they can't. They're too busy overpaying middle tier players to fill their holes, they can't afford to overpay #1 centers coming out of his ELC.

If you click on this completely incomparable centre you'll see that he missed 20 games a year ago and scored at better than a point per game. Marner didn't outperform anyone until he got to ride shotgun to Tavares who coincidentally has put up the 3rd most goals over the last decade and 7th most points...league wide.

I'm not a Matthews fan yet. One day he'll put it all together and be worth his contract and maybe I'll cut him some slack then. Marner on the other hand, scored 8 more points in his first 2 years than his other teammate, the one that plays rw and makes more plays than he scores goals. What's his AAV this year?

Oh, okay, so we’re concerned with his rookie year now? Nah. He lead the team in points back to back years. He gonna get paid