Mitch Marner is going to Vegas, after the Golden Knights made another major move to add a big-time player, snatching up the top pending free agent before the rest of the NHL got the opportunity.
They got Marner in a sign-and-trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs agreed to on Monday and announced early Tuesday. They signed the two-time All-Star winger to a $96 million contract for the maximum eight years before Marner would have been eligible to go anywhere else.
Marner, 28, will count $12 million against the salary cap through the 2032-33 NHL season. He is coming off setting career highs with 75 assists and 102 points.
Vegas sent center Nicolas Roy to Toronto to jump the line on Marner, who would have been the most sought-after player beginning at noon EDT.
Instead, the talented, productive winger joins the Golden Knights' successful core of Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore and Adin Hill, which has made the playoffs three years in a row under coach Bruce Cassidy, including winning the Stanley Cup in 2023.
Marner has never had that kind of postseason success. Toronto’s so-called Core Four of Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares won two of their 11 playoff series over the past nine years together and never got past the second round.
Change was coming, and Marner is the first out the door. The No. 4 pick in the 2015 draft leaves the Leafs as their fifth-highest scorer in franchise history at 741 points in the regular season on 221 goals (14th) and 520 assists (fourth).
Marner has just 13 goals to show for 70 playoff games, an average of 0.19 that ranks 94th among those with at least 50 games of experience since he entered the league in 2016. He is the team’s postseason leading scorer over this stretch with 63 points, ahead of Nylander’s 59, Matthews’ 58, Morgan Reilly’s 47 and Tavares’ 31.
For whatever reason, Marner was saddled with an outsized share of the blame for the early exits, and the Toronto-area native never got the chance to end his boyhood team’s championship drought that dates to 1967 — almost 30 years to the day before he was born.
After it was unavailable in Toronto because of Doug Gilmour, Marner will return to his No. 93 jersey with the Golden Knights. He also wore it in junior hockey with the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League.
The deal for Marner came together as Vegas announced that veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo was stepping away from hockey because his hip injury would require bilateral femur reconstruction that general manager Kelly McCrimmon said had “no guarantee of success.” Pietrangelo going on long-term injured reserve in part paves the way for the Golden Knights to fit Marner in under the salary cap.
“After exploring options with doctors as well as my family, it’s been advised to remove the intensity of hockey to see if my body can improve so that I can return to a normal quality of life,” Pietrangelo said. "This decision has been difficult to come to terms with after the last 17 years of competition and the camaraderie with my teammates and coaches. The likelihood is low that my body will recover to the standard required to play, but I know this is the right decision for me and my family.”
___
AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow contributed to this report.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
