Quoting: Sign_em_up000000
I get your point, but Matthews was willing to go 8 years Dubas felt more comfortable at 5 because of the AAV.
Marner hasn't outscored Mathews, but he has gotten more points although in more games played.
Wingers are the easiest commodity to get in the NHL centers and RHD are the hardest.
Our argument has nothing to do with Matthews being the 1st OA pick (that's just silly) it has to do with the fact that Marner “chose" to wait until last to sign and now we only have so much to pay him without further hurting our chances of competing.
Maybe Matthews leaves in 5 years but our window to win is 2 years as we likely can't afford to keep Andersen and it would be unwise to expect our prospects to step in and fill that void when neither has played a single AHL game yet.
As I said negotiations are a two-way street and Marner so far hasn't been willing to budge.
i get you see him as only a winger but when teams look at him they look at his potential to play Center like MTL did with Domi,Danault and Drouin with mixed results.
When i look at Marner i see him as potentially Domi's Center as in small sample's Marner's got good faceoff skills and Domi is ideally our top line LW because he's not strong on faceoffs and likes battling along the boards which is nice but as a Center when you do that you're leaving the center ice open a lot.Marners someone i'd like to see Center MTL's 2nd line with Domi-Marner-Suzki as the future top line .
Other teams would look at Marner and think of developing him into a Center as well i'm sure .
he played junior as a Center was drafted as a Center but TML was blessed with pretty solid Center depth at the time
with Mathews ,Kadri,Bozak there and its only gotten better so TML has no need or desire to develop him as a Center
but back to Marner its not only him not Willing to Budge . The NHL has a surge in high profile RFA's not signing
most notable RFA's left without deal is Point ,Tkachuk ,Marner, Rantanen , Connor ,Boeser,Laine , Koenechy,Werenski ,White ,McAvoy , Beauvlliier,Provorov,Lemieux and Fiala . Not all are hold outs like Laine,Marner ,Tkachuk and Point who are all on teams with limit cap this year and next year to work with so its bound to go on for some time to come.