Mitch Marner’s Maple Leafs Exit Echoes Gordie Drillon’s Painful Departure

Drillon’s Fall from Grace

Eight decades earlier, Gordie Drillon experienced a similarly crushing end to his Leafs tenure. A scoring star who led the NHL in points (52) in 1937-38 and won the Lady Byng Trophy, Drillon was expected to deliver in the 1942 Stanley Cup Final against Detroit. Instead, after three scoreless games, coach Hap Day benched him for utility forward Don Metz.

The gamble worked: Metz helped spark the Leafs to four straight wins and the Cup. But for Drillon, the benching was devastating.

“It grew and grew in my mind each season, but when the series was finished and I wasn’t even on the bench, that Cup grew smaller and smaller. Just a shattered dream,” he told Globe and Mail columnist Vern DeGeer.

By October 1942, Drillon was traded to Montreal. He put up 50 points in his lone Canadiens season before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Then and Now

Marner’s split isn’t as bitter, but the echoes are there: a Toronto star blamed for playoff failure, weighed down by off-ice pressures, ultimately moving on. Leafs GM Brad Treliving summed it up bluntly after another second-round exit to Florida:

“If you keep getting the same results, there’s some DNA that needs to change.”

For Drillon, that change meant exile. For Marner, it’s reinvention in Vegas.

A New Beginning in Vegas

While Drillon never touched the Stanley Cup again, Marner’s story is far from over. At just 28, he joins a Golden Knights team built to contend, leaving behind a Leafs fan base still dazed by his departure.

“It’s time for a new chapter in life,” Marner said.

And perhaps, unlike Drillon’s shattered dream, Marner’s new chapter might yet include the Cup.