No, it makes them a lot weaker. Leafs could easily go from 108 points down to 98 points and fighting for a wild card spot. The division isn’t just going to crumble next year.
For starters, Matthews won’t be happy. Going from Marner to Domi is a massive, giant downgrade. You want your 69 goal scorer to score 69 goals? You keep his #1 elite playmaker. Remember, his contract expires in 3 years. You won’t keep him if he’s not happy.
Secondly, the PP suffers, which is already shit and run by an idiot. Taking away a passing weapon like Marner makes it even harder to set-up Matthews on the PP.
Third, the defense / PK suffers because Marner is a Selke candidate who kills penalties, steals pucks and prevents goals.
If the Leafs don’t win the division again (without Marner, they won’t), they risk losing to the Panthers in the 1st round. Or even Tampa Bay. Ottawa won’t be an easy out either. Neither is an up and coming Montreal team. Just because Boston fell off the map, doesn’t mean the regular season and the division don’t matter anymore. The worse the match-up, the less likely they can win a playoff round, much less multiple rounds.
And if you go down the list of UFAs, the vast majority of them are garbage in the playoffs, including Tavares who did not score a point in 6 out of 7 games against Florida and will only get worse defensively at 35+. So as much as people want to make BeLeaf they can just replace Marner with UFA playoff Gods, they are indeed dreaming. The playoff performers out there are either 35+ (Giroux, Kane, Toews etc.) or going to stay where they are (Bennett, Marchand in Florida) if they know what is good for them.
~UG
Never winning a thing because you sunk all your money into 3-4 guys who all play the same way and don’t have the balls to stand up when it counts is another sure way to lose your players. If the Leafs had insulated Marner with size and given him his own line to drive instead of putting him with Matthews, maybe the fanbase doesn’t scapegoat him and maybe he stays. They didn’t. An overwhelming majority of the fanbase hates him and wants him gone – ironically while driving him out of town, they’ll also hate him for not waiving his NTC for Rantanen because he wanted to stay.
But Marner just does the same things every year – gets pushed to the perimeter and isn’t strong enough nor fast enough to push the defenders back when he’s entering the zone. The book on Marner is – close on him quickly and he’ll give away the puck.
He is nowhere near as talented, but Domi was more effective against Florida than Marner was. 9 years of all of these guys not showing up when it counts – and maybe you give them a pass for their first couple of years – but 7 years with Tavares – and none of them have stepped up when it mattered, and what’s worse is that they have actually played worse when it mattered.
How long do you get? How often can we keep trying with the same guys who don’t step up and get it done before we start to say we need other guys? It starts with Marner because he’s easy. You get nothing for him but you’re not overpaying him and he has to go – you heard the fans booing specifically him in game 7. In my opinion, there’s no coming back there.
I know Marner is fantastic and versatile and an excellent player. I also know that we have too much “Mitch Marner” on this team already and not enough Bennett and Marchand and Benn (I don’t want THIS Benn, I want prime Benn – but he comes to mind as what you need) and Perry. They need more asshole and a lot less pretty.