Quoting: CheechYou
I'm as high on Marner as you are -- trust me on that. What I'm skeptical of is 2 things:
1) it does matter who's on the other two lines when it comes to winning a stanley cup. There's usually at least 2-3 teams who are super deep and if you're lucky or on talent alone (ala EK65 with the Sens a few yrs back), top players with no depth behind them can will a team far with a small chance of even winning it all. But it's a lot more consistent to try and have maybe 2 11mil+ contracts instead of 3 and deepen the team instead. Which brings me to
2) I think Matthews/JT91/Kadri are all tremendous players in their own right and it's a huge added bonus of having Marner with them, but I don't think the drop-off of playing with Marner vs. playing without him is big enough to say he's turning this guy into this, this guy into that.
well, in kadri's case, he has yet to hit anywhere near 30 goals when playing without marner on his line. he was injured this year, so he maybe would've had low 20s, but still not anywhere near 32
Tavares, trust me, if you watch the highlights, he's good for 35ish goals, being point per game, but holy hell marner let him cake walk to nearly 50. This year playing without marner he was on pace for about 34 (albeit injured)
the other two lines matter, but not necessarily for scoring. Tampa had relatively little scoring from their bottom 6, yet it was their defensive play and general sandpaper qualities that made them valuable. the problem imo with the leaf's bottom 6 was "wow, all 4 lines can score!" and then come playoff time kappy/johnsson/kerfoot/clifford/engvall etc. vanish. Signing role players (i.e. a pat maroon) who never scores but is a leader and a grinder who plays great hockey is the key to winning
usually you want all 4 lines to score (i.e. STL and DAL), but imo in top heavy cases like pittsburgh, tampa, and the leafs, it's more of a bonus if your bottom lines score, provided they do all the other things right like lead, play good defense, shut the game down etc. (which the leaf's previous bottom 6s failed at miserably)