"Everybody's trying to be really careful here, but one of the things that a few people have told me is not to be surprised if this plays out over next season with Marner and Toronto.
Now, there's a lot of time between here and then, and things can always change, but this is such a delicate conversation between player and team, because everyone is determined to look like a winner here.
The Leafs are determined to either make a good trade, or, with the cap room that's created by that trade, do something big. That they know they can't afford to have a swing and a miss with this one.
Also, the player is determined, and more importantly, the people around the player, are determined to do this and make themselves look good. They're not going to do anything that they think puts them in a bad light, so this is a really complicated thing going in.
I want to throw a couple of other points out there to you. Number one, I think that there is some real concern about how the Toronto fans will react to Marner if he starts next year unsigned. And you can't avoid that... If that's what Marner wants to do, he has every right in the world to do it, but he has to understand that some of the fanbase is not going to react very well to that and you have to play through that. Are you comfortable with that? Can you handle that? And I do believe that's one of the things that's been discussed.
The other issue that [the Maple Leafs] are dealing with here, and I think there are people in the organization who feel very strongly about this, is that they traded Nazem Kadri a couple of years ago when they were mad at him... Nazem Kadri went somewhere else, sorted himself out, was a critical member of a Stanley Cup champion, and is a player that Toronto very much missed after he left and I think there are people in the organization who are looking at this and believe, 'could this be Kadri 2.0?', where Marner goes somewhere else where the spotlight is less intense, he learns how to balance everything and goes out and becomes a key player on a Stanley Cup Champion in another city - which I do believe could happen.
To me, that is a very legitimate thing, that Marner could go somewhere else quieter and really thrive. I think he's a great player and I think he could become an even better player without the spotlight. And I do think there are people within the organization who are very scared of the possibility of that happening."
