What We Learned: Tampering an issue on a chaotic July 1?
It's not good to lose a player who is top-five in the world at his position. Let's just get that out of the way.
But honestly, if the Mitch Marner era had to end in Toronto — and it very clearly did, and will — then this is the exact right way for it to happen. A whirlwind of drama, but more value than many were ever all that willing to give him credit for.
Like, of course this ends with him going to Vegas, simultaneously more and less of a pressure cooker than Toronto is, with the reported threat of tampering charges being filed and the possibility that a trade goes through to help the Maple Leafs more than it has any right to.
Obviously you're taking a downgrade on your overall roster quality if you're swapping out Marner for Nicolas Roy (and maybe, until he was traded to Nashville, Nicolas Hague), but the Leafs are a day away from losing Marner for no return at all, so potentially being able to wring a bona fide NHL player and maybe some picks out of that is certainly preferable. But if this is the angle Brad Treliving feels like he has to take, it is the right one.
There's a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge about contracts that get signed at noon on July 1, but as Elliotte Friedman reminded us on Sunday morning, tampering rules exist for a reason. The league went out of its way with an in-person meeting and follow-up email in November about this exact problem, reiterating its wide array of potential punishments for both the teams and individuals involved in tampering, specifically because of how the free agency period went last year. There's reportedly a feeling that the NHL is looking for an excuse to take a flamethrower to any team, player, agent, GM, etc., who would continue to do the kind of thing it's warned them about. Basically, the NHL is saying, "Try me," and the implication of the word "tampering" being out there at all is that there's a feeling the Golden Knights are a little too in-contact with Marner's camp, especially because they seem to have been targeting the player in various trade efforts over the last year or so.
No one on the outside of these talks knows how true those allegations are or aren't, but the fact that this is out there in rumors at all is fascinating. Let's just say that the price of buying a day or two worth of "exclusive negotiating window" for a pending unrestricted free agent isn't usually "one or two NHL players." It's not really fair to compare, say, the Noah Dobson trade the other day because he's signed for next season and was still under the Islanders' control, but when Carolina traded the rights to negotiate with pending UFA Jake Guentzel to Tampa just last summer, for example, all they got out of it was a third-round pick. You might like the guy Carolina used that pick on, Roman Bausov, as a prospect (and the team of experts here at EP see some fun upside there) but if he turns out to be as impactful at a different position as Roy, that's a moonshot home run for the Hurricanes.
For Toronto to get Roy and maybe more out of it would be great, and of course to squeeze Marner under the cap, this is a great way for Vegas to offload some medium-sized cap commitments. It might not fix all Toronto's problems, such as the gaping hole now sitting on the right side of their top line, but they'd still have plenty of cap space to work with. Just like the vast majority of teams in the league right now.
That having been said, it makes sense why Vegas would be this ardent in their pursuit. This is Mitch Marner we're talking about, who's absolutely the best (regular-season?) player to hit the open market in years. Vegas is the most all-in-every-year team in the NHL, maybe all of North American sports, so it makes sense they would be supremely aggressive about this.
You have to wonder just how severe the penalty would have to be for Vegas to not want to tamper. They're a premier franchise that is in the rare class of NHL team that basically prints money, and usually advances out of the first round of the playoffs, so the reported penalties of however many millions of dollars in fines and whatever draft picks the league might take away? In theory, they might not worry about that. Maybe even drawing the ire of the league and fellow GMs, and the ignominity of being outed as A Tamperer, might not be enough to dissuade more ruthless teams. But on top of that, the league also has the power to cancel the contract Marner signed on July 1, which would be a nightmare for Vegas on top of the other penalties. And beyond that, I think the biggest issue that would lead Vegas to make this trade with Toronto is that individuals involved in tampering can also be personally fined (up to $1 million!), suspended, or even expelled from the league. No one wants that.
Again, who knows what anyone could prove here? But the mere suggestion of impropriety has these trade talks swirling, so that's how seriously it's being taken for player, teams, and league. And it should be.
I personally can't get too worked up about tampering because Toronto has basically said it's going to lose the player to begin with, and also the fact that it certainly doesn't seem like Marner is even looking for a max-term deal out of this. But if Treliving and Co. feel as though they should get a sweetener for Vegas to jump the line, as is only right, they necessarily should be directing everyone's attention that Sword-of-Damocles email from the league.
Maybe this is all nothing. Marner might sign with Carolina or Anaheim or Chicago or any of the half-dozen other teams he's been linked to for months. But, what, you thought we were getting out of the Marner saga without one last twist? It's only fitting.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: You have to hand it to Pat Verbeek, who has now finally finished trading everyone he was rumored to have been trading for the last two years. Nice to knock stuff off your to-do list, isn't it?
Boston Bruins: The Bruins love drafting guys who play college hockey in Boston. It's not really hard to see why.
Buffalo Sabres: Oh, cool. I bet that's gonna go great.
Calgary Flames: This makes sense. I don't see a reason to hurry. They call that "selling low."
Carolina Hurricanes: Given that only three teams in the entire league have more cap space entering free agency? I bet.
Chicago: Is that what they're doing?
Colorado Avalanche: Feels like this is just gonna happen every two months for the next few years. Get used to it.
Columbus Blue Jackets: They like all the guys they drafted. This is great news for them.
Dallas Stars: At some point we just have to assume the voters stopped paying attention, right? Didn't one other guy's team win two Stanley Cups in a row?
Detroit Red Wings: Big-time sorry to Sebastian Cossa. You're not their guy!
Edmonton Oilers: "Could be." Yeah I'll say.
Florida Panthers: People act like them losing Aaron Ekblad will be a huge problem, but I truly do not see it that way. If you're choosing between him and one of the other two UFAs, one of whom you already successfully re-signed below market rate, you let him walk for sure.
Los Angeles Kings: If I'm a Kings fan I do not like how much of the blue line they're about to turn over.
Minnesota Wild: If you say so.
Montreal Canadiens: This is one of those things you take with a grain of salt at first blush, but then you realize Noah Dobson is from Prince Edward Island and you go, "Okay, maybe he would love playing for the Canadiens after all." That's close enough, I feel like.
Nashville Predators: Generally speaking, your franchise might not be in the best place when you see the word "heat" associated with your head coach in June. Just my opinion.
New Jersey Devils: Can you really say this for sure about a guy who had 36 points last season?
New York Islanders: Usually you see team media get a little too fawning with their coverage, but this headline honestly undersells how well this weekend went for the Isles.
New York Rangers: I simply love to stand pat with lingering uncertainty.
Ottawa Senators: If they do, I don't think you can say it was underrated.
Philadelphia Flyers: This is maybe the most interesting acquisition of the offseason so far. Fascinated to see how it turns out.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Not really sure I see a ton of utility for Connor Clifton on this team, but you always need bodies, I guess.
San Jose Sharks: It's crazy how much cap space the Sharks have now. They ended the draft with almost $44.1 million of it. Wonder just how much they're gonna leverage it by the time we hit September.
Seattle Kraken: This would not be the right decision. Maybe not a buyout, but…
St. Louis Blues: I'm really surprised by this. Would not be the avenue I'd personally pursue.
Tampa Bay Lightning: Kinda shocking this is stretching on as much as it has, too.
Toronto Maple Leafs: This new deal maybe makes all the Pajama Boy stuff make more sense. He baaaaarely took a discount the first time. Now, he's costing himself serious money, which he of course gets to not-worry about because of how much he got on the last deal.
Utah Mammoth: Some really interesting quotes about team building in here. I largely agree with them, which is probably what makes them so interesting to me, personally.
Vancouver Canucks: Yeah, no kidding.
Vegas Golden Knights: This gets a big-time wow from me.
Washington Capitals: What the heck?
Winnipeg Jets: The team's leadership group is very excited about this whole Jonathan Toews thing. I, uhhhhh, wish them the best.
Gold Star Award
Even a stinky draft — and boy was this one ever stinky! — is pretty damn fun. I love it.
Minus of the Weekend
It rocked when all the little hockey boys had to go into the cube to do a Zoom meeting.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "boredmale" wants to save a bit of money:
Islanders are in sort of a retooling process while Minnesota seems to want to win now
NYI
Minnesota's 2026 pick(top 10 protected)
Min
Lee @ 50%
Pageau @ 50%