With 18 points through 12 games, Mitch Marner leads the entire NHL in playoff scoring. He is set to play in the conference finals for the first time when Las Vegas takes on Colorado.
Because the Maple Leafs cannot go a week without springing another leak, the latest one is Mitch Marner. On Tuesday, Marner's new team, the Vegas Golden Knights, advanced to a conference final. For nearly a decade with the Leafs, Marner was a permanently agitated playoff passenger. In Vegas, he is sled-pulling the rest of the roster. As of Wednesday morning, Marner leads in playoff points and is pulling away. He has nearly as many goals through two rounds this year as he had in his last six post-seasons with the Leafs. It is possible that Las Vegas is the difference, but everyone in Toronto knows it is Toronto.
In Ontario, Marner was a big deal. In Nevada, he is a big hockey deal. The first thing you cannot escape no matter where you go. The second requires you to walk 100 metres in any direction away from the arena, from which point on you are invisible. This is important because hockey players seem to be uniquely affected by negative attention. Your average South American soccer star has more on his mind – whether he will score, whether the coach likes him, whether his auntie back home will be kidnapped and held for ransom – but you do not hear them kvetching so much.
It must be because hockey players have an easy alternative. They can play here and be constantly judged, or they can go to the warmer parts of the U.S. and be mostly ignored. The key is that they are paid the same either way. The soccer player in our example does not get that option. If he wants the money and the glory, he must accept the pressure. In the NFL and the NBA, pressure is the same everywhere. It may be slightly greater in smaller markets, because what else do they have to do?
It is only hockey where you get your pick – a bright, interrogatory spotlight, or something moodier that comes with a dimmer switch. Marner obviously prefers the latter. Of course, you are not allowed to say that. Put it to any hockey person and they bristle. “That narrative [that Marner is a playoff burden] is a bunch of bullshit,” his coach, John Tortorella, said a couple of days ago. “Mitch does not care.”
He does not care? Then why did he spend 10 years with the Leafs looking like someone had just slapped him with a fish?
Also, this is pretty rich coming from Tortorella. When this guy coached the Rangers, he went publicly squirrelly every time the New York Post printed his name. And that is a city where pro hockey is on the same level as high-school basketball. A season in Toronto would put Tortorella in psychological traction. He would have to go on a Kremlin internet diet – good news only – and hire a valet to carry around his blood-pressure medication.
This is why a stats-based, AI-enabled approach to hiring will never work in Toronto. The computer wants you to go out and get the fastest, strongest, most skilled people, but has nothing to say about the soul of a competitor. In Toronto, soul is 90 per cent of it. Take another thriving former Leaf – goalie Frederik Andersen. He is far and away the best goalie in these playoffs. Andersen was okay in Toronto, but when scrummed, he appeared to be in physical pain. It was not great when he was running hot, but whenever he went cold, those interviews viewed like someone getting beaten with a bag of oranges. Now Andersen is in Carolina, where the people he meets at the local Cracker Barrel think 'hockey player' has something to do with being a ladies' man. He is doing much better.
It takes a singular personality to thrive in Toronto. If you had to boil it down to a dating profile – contrary, look-at-me type enjoys being unpopular and proving people wrong. Also, likes travel, being approached in restaurants by strangers and fist fighting. Hockey players in other places can afford to be boring. Not in Toronto. If you are not some combination of charming, witty or zany, people will eventually turn on you. How many Leafs of the current generation are charming? A couple, but none of the really big stars. Witty? None. Zany? Are you kidding me? The Leafs went out and drafted excellent talent, but it is uniformly brittle. Is that not what Marner is proving in real time? That the moment people stop looking at him, he is able perform in big moments. That is not Marner's fault. It is Toronto's. They have a million people in pro scouting. Why are they not treating mental make-up the same way they treat the physical? Take the American problem out of it, and the Tkachuk brothers are perfect Toronto Maple Leafs. They love being talked about and – this is the important part – do not care what people are saying. Brad Marchand is a perfect Maple Leaf. Hate makes him stronger. Sidney Crosby is a perfect Maple Leaf. He lives in his own hockey world, and no one can reach him there. As much as people would like it to be otherwise, Connor McDavid is an imperfect Maple Leaf. He shies from attention, and is incapable of diverting it.
The next big question for the Leafs is not which potential No. 1 pick is the best hockey player. It is which of them is best suited for this impossible market. Before discussing the bench press, let us go deep about how they disappointed their mothers, and how that makes them feel. Same for the next coach. Winning in North Carolina does not make you ready for Toronto. In fact, winning elsewhere, under little or no scrutiny, may make your approach actively unsuitable. Think about the coaches who have succeeded here – guys like Pat Quinn and Pat Burns, who loved the to and fro, and had banter. Go find one of those. There are not many (any?) left.
Aside from getting himself paid, Mitch Marner did not accomplish much in Toronto. But were he able to force the Leafs to finally accept that their team is not like other teams, and that that is not a good thing, then you could say he was a net positive for the Leafs. He proved they were wrong about him. Not in the end, but from the get-go.
