TORONTO – Hours before his first game as a visiting player at Scotiabank Arena, Mitch Marner said he didn’t want to look back on the nine years he spent playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The best homegrown player in team history acknowledged that he was feeling mixed emotions ahead of Friday’s visit with the Vegas Golden Knights, the team he landed with in a sign-and-trade last summer after deciding he was unwilling to pursue a contract extension in Toronto.
“I don’t want to look back anymore,” Marner said. “I don’t want to look in the past. If you do look back, you’re not focused on what’s in front of you. Not to kind of not answer (your question), but I feel like I answered that in the summertime and I’m focused on what’s going on right now.”
Directly in front of him was a game that very few NHLers ever face.
While players routinely switch teams, rarely do those transactions elicit the kind of visceral reaction this one did. Marner was raised as a diehard Leafs fan just north of Toronto and arrived as a potential franchise saviour alongside Auston Matthews and William Nylander after being drafted with the fourth pick in 2015. He became a star in his hometown, rising to sixth on the organization’s all-time points list in just nine seasons, but also got saddled with a healthy share of the blame for Toronto’s inability to advance past the second round of the playoffs while repeatedly losing Game 7’s.
With his contract set to expire after last season and his wife Stephanie pregnant with their baby Miles, Marner declined to waive his no-movement clause to facilitate a potential deal to the Carolina Hurricanes ahead of the March trade deadline. He instead intended to exercise his right to test free agency — at least until the Leafs and Golden Knights executed the June 30 sign-and-trade that brought back third-line center Nicolas Roy.
There’s no mystery about what kind of welcome awaited him on his return to Toronto. Marner was audibly booed by traveling Leafs when the teams met last week at T-Mobile Arena, and this time, Leafs fans will vastly outnumber any Vegas supporters in the stands at Scotiabank Arena.
“Like I said after that game, it’s a passionate fanbase and they travel well,” Marner said. “They wanted to let their voices be heard.”
One thing he copped to appreciating about the Leafs faithful was their unending support for the team: “They’re always passionate. They’re going to let you know, and that’s something that you appreciate about it.”
The Leafs plan to honor Marner with a short tribute video during the first television timeout. Rather than anticipating how that might make him feel, the 28-year-old planned to just let everything hit him as it will in the moment.
“That one I’m trying not to think of too much,” Marner said. “I’m sure it will really hit once it starts going and stuff like that. I’m not trying to think about it too much. It’s going to be a cool moment. I’m going to try to enjoy it and then try to get back to hockey right away.
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that too much, I’m trying not to. I know it’s going to be a maybe weird cool special moment all in one.”
The hype heading into the game was about as high as one could expect for a regular-season meeting in January between two teams from different conferences. It was due to be televised nationally in Canada on Sportsnet, outside of the network’s typical national window on a Friday night. Thirty reporters showed up at the Golden Knights hotel on Friday morning for a short media availability with the player.
Ironically, Marner had a front-row seat for one of the few situations like this one when former Leafs teammate John Tavares returned to Long Island on Feb. 28, 2019. Tavares was treated to a nasty reception after leaving the Islanders in free agency the previous summer, with fans driving over his jersey in the Nassau Coliseum parking lot before the game and one even tossing a rubber snake in his direction at the end of warmups. Tavares was booed mercilessly during a 6-1 Leafs loss that night.
“I remember the outcome wasn’t great,” Marner said. “I remember just how calm and collected he was throughout it all. I wish we played a better game for him in that first game back. He was cool and collected about it. It didn’t bother him as much as maybe people thought it could have, or tried to do. That was pretty interesting.
“I think for me to watch that and think of it now, that’s kind of the same way I’m going to try to do it.”
No matter what happens on Friday, it promises to be a night Marner never forgets.
Scotiabank Arena was a place where he grew up going to games and dreaming of forging his own NHL career. It was where he scored his first NHL goal against Anton Khudobin of the Boston Bruins on Oct. 15, 2016. It was also the building where he played his final game for the Leafs, with both boos and beers raining down on the home team at the end of a Game 7 dismantling by the Florida Panthers on May 18.
As the questions continued Friday morning, Marner eventually softened his stance slightly on reminiscing. He indulged one query on what it meant to him to play all of those years for his boyhood team here in Toronto.
“Yeah, it was special,” said Marner. “Like I said to you guys throughout the summers and the end of last year, it was something that I think if you told my younger self, I wouldn’t believe it. It was a special thing to wear that Maple Leaf jersey. I always wanted to.
“To be able to do it for nine years and be a part of that team and to play in that arena that I grew up trying to go to to watch Mats Sundin and all of the legends really play, yeah it was pretty cool.
“It’s something that I’ll be able to look back on and share with my kids. Just how fortunate I was for that.”
