Welcome to Mitch Marner Week

When the sixth-leading scorer in franchise history leaves under acrimonious circumstances, you have to cover it in exhaustive detail. Welcome to Mitch Marner Week at The Leafs Nation! We’ll have plenty of content, editorials, retrospectives and other items throughout the week, leading up to Marner’s return to Scotiabank Arena on Friday night, when the Toronto Maple Leafs host the Vegas Golden Knights.

Marner will likely receive a hostile reception on Friday, after his relationship with the fan base eroded. The star winger waited until the last possible second to force a trade to the Golden Knights, while a potential deal involving Mikko Rantanen fell through when Marner exercised his no-trade clause. Marner effectively bet on himself entering the playoffs, and it backfired — although he did get a handsome payout in the form of a eight-year contract worth $12 million annually with the Golden Knights. After refusing to entertain questions about his contract status during his final year with the Maple Leafs, while playing his worst two games of his career (Game 5, Game 7 against the Florida Panthers) during the postseason, it’s a unique permutation.

And to be clear, it wasn’t all bad. Marner provided plenty of bright, colourful memories as well, and the majority of his Leafs’ tenure was covered with resolute optimism. Marner is an all-world playmaker who developed into a strong defensive player as well, but his tremendous skill set rarely translated to playoff excellence. A decade full of promise was completely stunted during the postseason, and Marner’s refusal to take accountability for losses never translated well in the world’s largest hockey market.

In the aftermath of Marner’s dreadful performance in Game 7, some fan reactions completely crossed the line. We’re not going to re-live the uglier aspects of Marner’s departure, he deserves basic human decency and a right to feel safe within the City of Toronto.

There are avenues to make the fan base’s collective displeasure heard, and while there will be disparate opinions about Marner’s tenure, which we’ll cover in our staff roundtable this week, it seems more than fair for the fans to unleash their verbal wrath towards him. Although Marner and the Golden Knights emerged victorious on Thursday, the upcoming clash between both teams is the hottest ticket in town, the most anticipated regular season game of the NHL calendar.

We’ll have plenty of content about Marner leading up to Friday’s game. As we provide daily coverage of the Maple Leafs, we have to revisit the sixth-leading scorer in franchise history’s career to date, and perhaps piece together what went wrong over the past decade, while shining light on the bright moments. Marner was a homegrown superstar for the Maple Leafs. After a controversial, polarizing decision to leave the Maple Leafs, can Marner ever really come home again?