So, it’s Mitch Marner versus Frederik Andersen, then. One former impactful Maple Leaf will hoist the Stanley Cup sometime in the next 2 1/2 weeks, as the final between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Carolina Hurricanes — if it goes the full seven games — will come to an end on the night of June 17.
This is the way hockey works, unofficially. A player who did good things for the Leafs, even if those things didn’t happen in the playoffs, goes on to win the Cup with another team. Certainly, that’s the way the post-season has unfolded in the past decade, and it’s not always several years following a departure from Toronto that a player gets to put his hands on the big silver mug.
Traded by the Leafs to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the summer of 2015, Phil Kessel won the Cup the following season before enjoying a Cup encore with the Penguins in 2017. This came after Kessel, who would go on to win the Cup again in 2022 with the Vegas Golden Knights, played in one playoff round with the Leafs in six seasons. Tyler Bozak won the Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2018 after departing the Leafs the previous summer to sign with the Blues in free agency. A teammate of Bozak on the Cup-winning team was defenceman Carl Gunnarsson, drafted by the Leafs in 2007 and developed by Toronto prior to being traded to the Blues in the summer of 2014 for defenceman Roman Polak. And there was Leafs 2002 first-round pick Alex Steen, long gone from Toronto by 2018 but a contributing member of the Blues’ championship club. For Nazem Kadri, there was a period of nearly three years after the Leafs traded him to the Colorado Avalanche in the summer of 2019 before he hoisted the Cup with the Avs in 2022.
Should we have expected Marner’s Cup appearance?
In Marner’s case, you had to know, Leafs Nation, that he was going to have a chance to play for the Cup. That the opportunity potentially awaits less than a year after Marner became a member of the Golden Knights following a sign-and-trade with the Leafs, we would hazard a safe guess, carries a sharper sting. Considering the way in which the Golden Knights have had success since joining the National Hockey League for the 2017-18 season — making the Cup final three times and always seemingly in the conversation while missing the playoffs just once — there should be no surprise that Marner finally is going to be playing hockey in June. And considering he has seven years remaining on his contract, no eyebrows should be raised if he and Vegas reach the final again before it expires.
What makes the Marner-Andersen matchup in the final that much more intriguing is the role each has played in his respective team’s run to the Cup final. At most online betting sites, the two are front-runners for the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the most valuable player in the playoffs. As they should be. When the puck drops for Game 1 of the final on Tuesday night in Raleigh, N.C., Marner will be sitting comfortably atop the playoff scoring leaderboard with 21 points, three ahead of teammate Jack Eichel and five up on Carolina’s Taylor Hall.
Crucial for Marner and the Knights
Crucial for Marner and the Knights in the final is that he will have to find a way for his craftiness and overall cerebral play to come to the fore against a Hurricanes team that can grind down anyone in the game. After recording just three assists in the Western Conference final as Vegas swept the Avalanche, Marner will be eager to get back on offensive track. At times this spring, we’ve seen the wizardry we came to respect in Toronto on display.
For Andersen, there would be no better way to cap a five-year stint with the Hurricanes than to help bring the organization its second Cup and first since 2006. Andersen couldn’t make a post-season difference with the Leafs during a five-year Toronto tenure that ended when he signed a two-year pact with the Hurricanes in free agency in 2021. Now on his third contract with Carolina, a one-year deal with free agency looming in July, Andersen has been making up for lost opportunities, posting a .931 save percentage (best among goalies who played in five playoff games) and an NHL-best 1.41 goals against average. He’s 12-1 with three shutouts and the soft goals he would allow every so often with Toronto have all but disappeared behind a tight Hurricanes defence.
Neither Marner nor Andersen was able to get it done in Toronto when it mattered. That doesn’t take anything away from the accomplishments both have collected in the past couple of months. When the Cup is lifted by either Marner or Andersen, each will be deserving of the achievement.
