Brad Treliving appeared in Salt Lake City on Sunday afternoon to smooth the waters.
Publicly, at least, as it pertains to the Maple Leafs and Mitch Marner.
The Leafs’ general manager held a brief media availability following the club’s practice at the Utah Olympic Oval.
With reports surfacing during the weekend that the Leafs asked Marner if he would waive his no-movement clause to facilitate a trade with the Carolina Hurricanes for Mikko Rantanen, Treliving took a shot at setting the record straight.
“I’m not going to get into any questions with regard to (the) contract and the business side of it,” Treliving said. “Other than, we’re aligned with Mitch. We’re worried about this season. We’re worried about the games we have coming up. We want Mitch here for a long time.
“It’s not a distraction. We think the world of him. It’s just not a question we’re going to get into every day. We’ve dealt with it here. We move forward. We’re all focused on (the Leafs’ remaining 19 games).”
Messages left with Darren Ferris, Marner’s agent, were not immediately returned on Sunday afternoon.
In the Leafs’ first game after the National Hockey League trade deadline came and went on Friday, Marner scored two goals and was named the third star in Toronto’s 7-4 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.
Afterward, Marner reiterated his desire to stay in Toronto.
“I’m here to play hockey with this team,” he said. “I want to be with this team, I want to play with this team.”
Marner is seventh in NHL scoring with 79 points in 62 games.
On Sunday, Treliving took one question on the topic. It was about what he has liked in regard to how Marner has handled the situation.
“Everything,” Treliving said. “We like everything about Mitch. We talked about it at the beginning of the year — we’re going to try to handle the business side of it away from it.
“I think he has handled everything extremely well. I wanted to make sure we came out, addressed it, and I support Mitch 1,000% and he’s not out here on an island with us. We’re trying to worry about winning hockey games.”
Rantanen was traded to the Dallas Stars on Friday and signed an eight-year, $96-million US contract extension for an average annual value of $12 million.
Leafs captain Auston Matthews’ AAV is $13.25 million, and even with the salary cap increase in the NHL, we don’t imagine the organization would want to go north of that with Marner.
Would somewhere in the $12 million to $13 million range with Marner get a deal done in Toronto?
At some point, we’ll know.
What the Rantanen signing did was leave the door wide open for the 27-year-old Marner on July 1 when NHL free agency starts.
There will be some good forwards who are eligible to be unrestricted free agents — Nikolaj Ehlers, Matt Duchene, Brad Marchand, Brock Nelson, Sam Bennett and Brock Boeser among them — but none are at the same level as Marner.
Provided Marner doesn’t re-sign with the Leafs, he will have teams lining up for his services.
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