Eight or more seasons of Brandt Clarke are worth more to us than one season of Mitch Marner.

Let's ignore the fact that Marner would likely resign if he waived to go there and the 14 years of dead caphit on PLD that the Kings will likely have if they don't trade him.

Not getting clarke

Aaah, I see that you got the point: without the pie-in-the-sky speculation that "Marner would likely resign if he waived to go there," which by no means follows, the Kings won't be trading Brandt Clarke for Mitch Marner.

Maybe MM waives just to get out of Toronto now that most of Leafs Nation is blaming him for the loss to Boston and wants to test free agency after the year is over. I think that that's a far more likely scenario wherever Mitch waives to go than that he foregoes testing the open market.

If Marner doesn't agree to resign with the team he's going to I can see the Leafs just hanging onto him and letting him walk. Especially given the pressure on management, its a far worse look to trade him for nothing then fail next year then it is to have him walk and you can blame him for being unreasonable with his demands/refusing a trade/etc.

I also thing again that you are massively underestimating the pressure on Blake who made a horrible trade last summer. Trading Dubois will be hard without throwing in a sweetener and likely still taking back a bad contract. Buying him out would essentially be penalizing the team for 14 years while having just given away a top 6 PWF that is super hard to come by. If you hold him past his 26th birthday then the buyout isn't even an option anymore so his value tanks even more. If someone is willing to take him and its in a deal where you are getting a top 10 winger (by point production) then he'd be crazy not to take it.

I think I have a different perspective working in the game but not every decision is made based on what is best for the on-ice product. A lot is made based on what is best for business and Marner while hated by real fans is loved by casual fans. A big portion of LAs fan base would love the trade. It's similar to the Faber for Fiala trade which every hockey analyst said was absurd but went over well with casual fans in LA and hasn't been questioned much.

I don't think that I'm underestimating the pressure on Blake at all. I've heard the "Fire Blake!" chants in CryptoDotCom Arena on some occasions when DuBois takes a penalty. And you're being gracious by saying that he made a horrible trade last summer -- the horrible error was to make a bad trade in order to sign DuBois to an absurd contract. And I agree that in order to trade DuBois, Blake is going to have to make it appealing to the other team. My criticism comes in the fantasy that Blake is stupid enough to compound his mistake(s) by using Byfield or Clarke as a "sweetener."

I think your characterization of Los Angeles fans as "casual" is ethnocentric. And I don't believe that the Los Angeles front office makes any decisions that aren't designed to improve the on-ice product. Your oft-repeated theory that some team would like to acquire Mitch Marner primarily in order to sell replica jerseys is, in my opinion, idiosyncratic.

As someone who works in the game, if you are ignoring the business side then I don't know how to explain to you that ultimately 99% or owners care more about money than winning.

Making a demonstrably and indisputably false statement doesn't explain anything to me. I can think of at least one ownership group (that's 1/32 of "all owners") off the top of my head that doesn't give a $h!t about money over winning -- Seattle Hockey Partners.

Yes, that's why they decided to sign a bunch guys in they late 20s/early 30s and compete in year 2 of their franchise instead of just tanking and getting bedard.