Mitch Marner, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the most disingenuous narrative of all time

One year after his messy departure from the Toronto Maple Leafs, Mitch Marner is headed to the Stanley Cup Final as a member of the Vegas Golden Knights.

It’s every media outlet and every staunch Leafs hater’s dream scenario, really. The Leafs finally moved on from one of their longest-tenured star forwards after yet another early exit from the playoffs in 2024-25, and in his first season away from the team, he advanced further in the playoffs than he ever did while he was in Toronto. Couple that with the fact that the Leafs outright missed the playoffs in 2025-26 and would have been headed into a dark offseason had they not lucked into the first overall pick, and this season played out exactly how the script makers would have had it.

On the surface, Marner’s playoff production is hard to ignore. He has 21 points in 16 games to lead the NHL in playoff scoring, which adds an extra element of irony considering the label he earned for not being able to perform in the playoffs. It’s not an overly surprising circumstance, either. If you look at Marner’s all-time playoff stats in Toronto, he tops that list from the past decade, too. Problem is, that production dried up severely the longer the series went on, and with one too many donuts on the scoresheet in games that the Leafs would eventually get eliminated in, he was never able to shed the notion of being a ‘playoff choker’ while he was in Toronto.

For other fanbases and media outlets, the annual Maple Leafs’ end-of-season press conference is must-see television. Another year of questions about what went wrong, and another day of (rightfully) pointing and laughing. It’s why the hockey world’s sudden infatuation with Marner is quietly shaping the most disingenuous narrative of all time.

Year after year of no-shows from the Leafs’ stars in winner-take-all games, Leafs fans would be ridiculed and laughed at for continuing to believe in the Core 4. That after a four-assist series loss against the under-.500 Montreal Canadiens complete with a shot of a teary-eyed Marner in the penalty box after a delay of game penalty in Game 6, they would figure it out. That after 0-point performances in games 6 and 7 leading to another first-round loss against the Bruins, he would figure it out. That after putting a no-look spin-o-rama pass directly onto the Florida Panthers’ sticks, resulting in a back-breaking goal in Game 5 while tied 2-2 in the series, Marner would finally learn to ignore the haters and lead his boyhood team to a Stanley Cup.

And now, we’re just pretending like none of that ever existed. We’re skipping to chapter ten and taking the story for what it is without reading chapters 1-9 to understand the context of what’s happening in the middle of the book.

The idea that Leafs fans ‘ran Marner out of town’ is a laughable one when you consider the amount of cheers he received in his return to Toronto in January, and it looks like a trip to the spa when you line it up next to how New York Islanders fans treated (and still treat) John Tavares after he signed with the Maple Leafs in 2018. And this is the same Tavares who scored at triple Marner’s playoff goal-per-game rate in his time with the New York Islanders, whereas Marner managed a fraction of that after threatening to play in Switzerland during his initial contract negotiations. None of this is to suggest that Tavares didn’t deserve to hear it from Islanders fans when he returned, but compare that reaction to how Marner was treated by the fans in his return despite his circumstances, and it renders the ‘Marner was run out of town by Leafs fans’ notion completely bogus. Yeah, he got boos. There will always be boos. But they only lasted until the video tribute.

In reality, the pressure and subsequent criticism from the most passionate market in the league eventually got to Marner, and a divorce became the only path forward. The Leafs wanted to keep him, but it became obvious that the feeling wasn’t mutual when he signed for $12 million annually despite reports that he would have commanded up to $13 million from Toronto.

Multiple things can be true here at the same time. It’s true that Marner was not cut out for the role he was paid to have in Toronto and that the lights were too bright for him there. It’s also true that the Leafs’ shortcomings in the playoffs can’t solely be blamed on him. The Vegas Golden Knights are built better than the Leafs ever were around Marner, and when you have players like Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, and Pavel Dorofeyev contributing as much as they are, he doesn’t have to be the one driving the offence like he was expected to in Toronto. Thirdly, it’s true that while the divorce was necessary for both sides, Toronto fans reserve the right to feel resentment towards him based on the direction his tenure went in. To act like fans are somehow wrong for having had enough of watching the same situation play out every year, and to act like he was the one that got away after spending years slamming the organization for their continued belief in Marner and that group is the highest measure of hypocrisy.

The reality of this situation is that the Toronto Maple Leafs are the most hated team in the league. They’re the New York Yankees of the NHL without any success in the past 60 years, and it’s rare to find somebody with a completely neutral opinion on them. You’re either a fan or you hate their guts. The only reason Marner’s being paraded around the way he has been is because he’s not ‘former San Jose Shark, Mitch Marner’. You might be asking, ‘what about Auston Matthews’ role in all of these playoff losses?’ to which I would say the situation would be the exact same if you swapped the names, because it was always about the crest on the jersey before it was about the player.

You can rip the Toronto Maple Leafs all you want for their handling of the Marner situation. If you’re a fan of a rival team, you’re rightfully eating your heart out with the content that came out of these playoffs. The Leafs look like idiots, Marner looks as though he’s gotten the last laugh, god forbid if the Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup. Enjoy all of it. But don’t try to erase the past and act like you always believed in Mitch Marner as a playoff performer.

It was never about Mitch Marner. It was always about the Toronto Maple Leafs and the attention they command.

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