It has been a wild few days around the Maple Leafs.
Tensions are high — as you could see in GM Brad Treliving’s odd, abbreviated media session on Sunday in Utah — and the organization is reeling from leaks that had them looking at trading Mitch Marner, the NHL’s sixth leading scorer and the team MVP this season.
The Marner situation has been a difficult one that the Leafs have managed well all year, keeping the rumor mill largely silent and the stalled contract talks from being a point of focus. Now, however, with just 19 games left until the playoffs, things have blown up in a big way in this market, and they’re trying to refocus everything back to what’s happening on the ice.
“It’s not a distraction,” Treliving said.
The Leafs’ core players have been through their fair share of media sideshows over the years, so I don’t think it will necessarily “break” them. But it’s certainly an unneeded disturbance at a critical time for a team that has designs on finally finding some real postseason success.
Let’s unpack some of what’s happened the past few weeks and what it means for the future.
Why the Leafs would go big on Rantanen
When it became clear the Carolina Hurricanes weren’t going to be able to sign him, Mikko Rantanen became the trade deadline’s biggest fish by a significant margin last week.
And indeed, most of the league was in on trying to see if they could acquire him before Friday’s deadline.
Few expected, however, that the Leafs would be at the front of the line, given their two biggest needs were help at center and on defense and they appeared to lack the right assets to go horse-trading with a fellow Eastern Conference contender for one of the best wingers in the league.
But the Leafs were so aggressive that they had discussions around multiple different packages for Rantanen, including some built around futures after Marner declined to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate a deal.
Trade discussions never progressed far enough to where the Leafs were in contract extension talks with Rantanen and agent Andy Scott, but they were believed to be willing to offer more than the eight-year, $96 million deal the Dallas Stars ultimately gave him.
The implications of the Leafs acquiring Rantanen and then giving him a huge new contract are fascinating. With Auston Matthews and William Nylander already making a combined $24.75 million, and RFA Matthew Knies and UFA John Tavares needing new contracts, adding Rantanen at $13 million or more would have meant there was no way to give Marner what he wanted.
This quick snapshot of the Leafs’ 2025-26 cap situation — with estimated contracts for those three included — gives you an idea of just how tight things would have been.
Total cap space for that 20-player roster? $1.08 million, enough to re-sign a fourth liner like Steven Lorentz or Pontus Holmberg to finish off the roster. Marner, in other words, would have been on the outside looking in, even if the Leafs walked away from Tavares and tried to clearcut elsewhere.
And wouldn’t that have made for an interesting dressing room to end the year.
So why would the Leafs still pursue a Rantanen trade, even with Marner in the fold? The biggest reason — beyond the fact he’s a great player on a reasonable contract for the rest of the season — is that it would finally give Toronto some certainty going into July 1.
As it stands right now, the Leafs are in the difficult position of being entirely at Marner’s mercy. He can take them right to July 1, field massive offers from around the league and then walk for nothing, a nightmare scenario that’s become a rarity for top players.
Getting Rantanen locked in, even if it made things uncomfortable the rest of the season, was a strong Plan B for the front office. It made a ton of sense, given the player was interested in signing long term.
The only tough part is they didn’t get it done, and now this is all out in the open getting picked apart.
Not only had they asked Marner to waive his no-trade clause, they clearly pursued his replacement even after not getting that go-ahead.
What does Marner want here?
It’s worth taking a quick step back to compare just how different the Rantanen and Marner situations have been the past few months.
Rantanen and the Colorado Avalanche, his original team, were locked in difficult negotiations leading up to the Jan. 24 trade to Carolina. At one point, the Avs were offering only $10.5 million and Rantanen’s camp had countered with $13.5 million, showing just how wide the divide was.
By the time he was dealt, however, the gap had narrowed to around $1 million. Part of why Rantanen felt so blindsided by the trade is he had believed there was continuous progress and that they were close.
Six weeks later, Rantanen signed for $12 million with a division rival — just $350,000 more per season than the Avs had been offering.
That’s not a wide enough gap that it should have played out like that, but there can be a lot of heated twists and turns in these negotiations and Colorado felt pressure given they had Nathan MacKinnon already on a big ticket and Cale Makar still to extend in the summer of 2026.
Rantanen is about as good a comparable to Marner as you can find in the league. They were picked at the top of the same draft in 2015, and their games played and point totals are remarkably similar a decade later.
They’re not identical players, obviously. Rantanen has had much more playoff success, and Marner is a true defensive stalwart. But on balance, they deserve to end up in the same ballpark compensation-wise at the end of the day.
Will they?
I doubt it.
The no-state-tax situation in Dallas is one factor that helped keep Rantanen’s cap hit down with the Stars, as was the fact that he ultimately decided not to head to the open market. If Marner pushes things all the way to July 1, I don’t doubt he can command $13.5 million or more, as there are plenty of franchises flush with cap space in the new environment and desperate to add high-end talent.
Most of them don’t have the Avalanche/Leafs luxury of too many superstars.
But I’ve been asked by Leafs fans all year how the Marner saga was going to play out, and my answer has always been the same: It depends what Marner wants. If he wants the biggest contract — one of the biggest in league history — it’ll be there for him.
But if he wants to stay in his hometown with the Leafs, it’s not going to be for the biggest number. You can see why looking at that cap sheet above. Swap Marner’s name for Rantanen and contemplate just how tight things are with him there at $13 million. Go higher and your ability to compete with the best teams in the league will be compromised. You can argue it is even at $13 million.
I don’t know for certain that the Leafs will go that high for Marner, but I suspect it’s close. Which makes the fact this is still dragging on rather confusing.
Unless this is about something more than staying at home on a fair contract.
Mitch Marner and the rest of the Leafs need to focus on winning games at the moment. After that, though… (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
What comes next for the Leafs
The Leafs have their hands full simply playing important games, so that’s where the focus will turn. They’re chasing the Panthers for a coveted spot at the top of the Atlantic Division, a win that would allow the Leafs to avoid facing a fellow contender in Round 1.
That’s something worth battling for, assuming Toronto can right the ship after a losing skid without Chris Tanev in the lineup of late.
If they can’t win the division and end up losing a close series to the Panthers or Lightning in the first round again, the fallout in Toronto isn’t going to be pretty. Ownership has a new CEO, Keith Pelley, in place, and he’s been evaluating every aspect of the organization over the past 11 months. Already, cuts have been made elsewhere.
In that scenario, it feels impossible that the Leafs’ front office and roster will be back next season looking anything like what they do today. And Marner will be the top consideration they’ll have to make.
Maybe, for a change of pace, a long playoff run heals the divide that’s there, and he ends up signing for less to stay. Maybe all of this noise going on right now about his no-movement clause and losing him without compensation will be a big nothingburger.
But that’s really all up in the air right now, with the outcome hanging on a lot of ifs and maybes.
And it’s awfully telling that when a sure thing — Rantanen — became available, the Leafs reached out with both hands and tried to pull it in.
(Top photo of Mitch Marner and Mikko Rantanen: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images and Perry Nelson / Imagn Images)
.