Out of his hometown’s spotlight — and expectations — Mitch Marner embraces a new start in Las Vegas – The Athletic

LAS VEGAS — In the months before Mitch Marner left home, he returned to a rink he played in as a kid.

Each morning, at the Vaughan Sports Village, Marner joined the same skills coach he’s been guided by since he was a 4-year-old. Rob Desveaux — Coach Rob, as Marner has always called him — returned from a broken leg and retirement in Florida to skate alongside his one-time prodigy, who was too short to see over the boards when his father, Paul, first brought him to his 3 Zones Hockey School.

The hockey camp no longer exists, and Desveaux has suggested his most accomplished student find a younger coach, but Marner keeps calling. Other than his father, Marner says Coach Rob understands his game better than anyone.

Over similar sessions through the past few summers, Marner seemed burdened as he ran through Desveaux’s familiar drills. Small mistakes frustrated him. He threw his stick. The elation he once felt in those summer sessions, spinning on his edges down the ice or cradling a hard pass on his backhand, was harder to find.

“Last year, I worked with him and I pushed him, pushed him and pushed him,” Desveaux said.  “And he didn’t seem to enjoy it as much.”

There was a time when Marner was viewed as a player who would never leave Toronto, but this offseason he became the biggest name to change NHL teams. The move surprised no one. What began a decade ago as the story of a homegrown star morphed into years of bitter playoff disappointments and mounting fan resentment. In a hockey city that has failed to win for six decades, that weight fell particularly hard on Marner.

Playoff losses and fan disappointment weighed on Mitch Marner, the hometown star who couldn’t lead the Maple Leafs to a Cup. Claus Andersen / Getty Images

Since he was young, Marner carried insurmountable expectations about what he could and should be. The noise was constant. Often our greatest critics are the ones who feel they raised us. The kid who grew up in his hometown’s glaring spotlight was now a 28-year-old father, looking to define his own way.

In the end, Marner’s eight-year, $96 million contract with the Vegas Golden Knights, was more than a money grab. He needed to leave.

Marner’s comments have always faced scrutiny. When he stumbled over an analogy intended to show appreciation by saying players were “looked upon as gods” in the city, he was lambasted for sounding arrogant. When he recently revealed that his address was posted online and he received a death threat after the Leafs were eliminated from the playoffs, he was criticized for appearing to make a big deal of it. Marner’s fiercely protective circle hasn’t always helped. His father once made headlines for making public comments about how his son was treated by the team, and a personal security guard threatened to restrict access to a popular Leafs podcaster who was critical of Marner’s play.

When Marner’s name comes up amongst Leafs fans, there are countless experts on what the winger lacked — armchair insiders who heard from a friend, who knows a guy’s cousin, who can confirm that Marner was “unpopular” in the room.

“There was always this narrative of who he was already,” said Dan Noble, the strength coach Marner has worked with since he was 12 years old.

But this summer people within Marner’s small, close circle saw the 28-year-old three-time All-Star reclaim something that had faded in the noise that followed him in recent years.

“He’s just excited to create his own path,” Noble said.

Skating on that ice north of Toronto — wearing the colors of the Vegas Golden Knights — a lightness returned to Marner’s sessions. Before one early-morning practice, Desveaux heard singing down the hallway. He hadn’t heard Marner’s ebullient pitch in a while.

Part of it might have been the anticipation of a new beginning in Vegas, Desveaux felt. But in his old student, the coach also saw the wonder of a widened life and the profound return to childhood that comes with being a dad.

“He was back to what he used to be,” Desveaux said.

In late September in Las Vegas, Marner’s shimmering gold No. 93 jersey appeared frequently along the winding path of a time-blind casino — past a Lady Gaga-themed store and a theatre hosting Mötley Crüe — next to flashing slot machines and high-limit tables.

The Golden Knights’ shiny new star was the latest fashion among the fans streaming through Park MGM, into the heavy heat of the strip toward T-Mobile Arena.

There is a stark contrast between where Marner is now and where he comes from. In the desert, the Golden Knights are just another act in a stretch of big-ticket draws. But the franchise has enjoyed a remarkable hot streak since its inception.

Over eight seasons, the Golden Knights have had plenty of playoff success to go along with their ability to put on a show for their fans. Ethan Miller / Getty Images

In eight sellout seasons of NHL existence, Vegas has lifted the Stanley Cup, reached the final twice, the conference final four times, and missed the playoffs only once. Here, hockey is show business without the heaviness of history.

Outside Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, bronzed statues of past legends sit on a ghostly team bench — a row of greats that spans a century. But the team itself hasn’t won a championship in nearly six decades. Four of the Leafs greats oxidizing for posterity never lifted the Stanley Cup.

Inside the concourse of T-Mobile Arena, a mural of Mark Stone, Jack Eichel and William Karlsson hoist the Stanley Cup they won two years ago. All three players began their careers elsewhere before finding success in Vegas. Birthed in an expansion draft, coming from away is a foundational part of the “Golden Misfits” unity. It’s a story that reflects the city itself. Between 1990 and 2017-18, the Golden Knights’ inaugural season, Las Vegas nearly tripled in size to more than 2.2 million people.

More than 17,000 fans showed up for the Golden Knights’ first preseason home game of 2025. (That’s 2,000 more than attended the Leafs preseason game in Toronto against the Ottawa Senators the same night.)

Golden Knights fans are used to the addition of star power. Eichel, the Sabres injured and disgruntled center, was traded to Las Vegas in 2021. Coveted two-way defenseman Noah Hanifin was traded to Las Vegas in 2024, after informing the Calgary Flames he didn’t intend to re-sign. Between Eichel, Hanifin and Marner, Vegas now has three of the top five picks from the 2015 draft on its roster.

But even before that first Vegas preseason game, Marner got top billing, his face adorning banners and his merchandise cluttering gift shop entrances. In a heart-jolting pregame hype show, Marner’s introduction was first, accompanied by golden flames dancing across the ice and a glowing-eyed drumline hammering its snare-stacatto.

Ten years ago, a moment like that would have been hard to imagine. Not just because the Golden Knights didn’t yet exist, but also because Marner’s future seemed indivisible from the city that raised him.

I first met Marner on his 19th birthday as he learned that his family home was engulfed by fire.

I stood outside the London Knights locker room with his mother, Bonnie, while she showed him a video of the blaze after he played the first game of the 2016 OHL Championship.

In the moment, Mitch, quietly shaken as he viewed the flames, worried about the safety of the family pets, a chocolate Lab named Winston and a cat, Burbank. The white ragdoll put up a fight as the firefighters rescued him, Bonnie said.

“Typical cat,” Mitch smiled nervously, still processing video of the fire rising from the roof of his house.

I told Mitch and Bonnie that I’d be writing a story.

“This is going to be news, obviously,” I said. “I just want you to know that I’m going to have to say that this happened to your house.”

“Yeah,” Marner nodded.

But I wasn’t sure if he really understood. Even though Knights fans lined up after London games for his autograph, Marner still seemed closer to teenager than man then — undersized, refreshingly unpolished and not fully aware of just how closely every move he made and every word he uttered would be consumed.

Within an hour, before that story was posted, footage of Marner’s burning house led newscasts in Toronto.

By that point in his young life, Marner had received more media attention than most kids his age. At 4 years old, he was named an “athlete of the week” by Toronto’s City TV newscast. At 11, he was featured in a short CBC documentary focusing on hockey families, his father Paul’s intensity captured as he videotaped the action from the stands.

The piece effectively revealed the aggressive, competitive and demanding hockey culture within Toronto’s top adolescent hockey ranks. Paul was far from an exception.

As a young star in the Greater Toronto Hockey League, Marner was immersed in the professionalized minor hockey machine. In junior high, he attended a private school tailored to high-performance athletics. In an interview with the Toronto Star, Paul estimated that between league fees, equipment, private lessons and other expenses, the family spent between $600,000 and $700,000 on hockey.

The game became his life.

When he was 15, Marner’s size — he was 5-7, 130 pounds — became a concern. He fell to 19th overall in the Ontario Hockey League draft. But in his second season playing for the powerhouse London Knights, Marner put up 126 points in 63 games.

He wore number 93 with the Knights, reflecting both the year of his older brother’s birth and a tribute to Toronto Maple Leafs 1990s star Doug Gilmour, his father’s favorite player. In his youth, Gilmour was also undersized and overlooked — but found success as a two-way player with a remarkable talent for assists.

When the Leafs drafted Marner fourth overall in the 2015 NHL Draft, it was the highest a locally born and raised player was selected by the team. At the draft in Sunrise, Fla., Marner’s family and friends cheered when Dylan Strome was selected third overall by the Arizona Coyotes, knowing it meant that Marner would go fourth to the Maple Leafs.

As a hockey player growing up near Toronto, there are few daydreams as potent as becoming a key figure on a Maple Leafs championship team. It is a glory so elusive the recollections play only in black-and-white.

Marner’s arrival — along with Auston Matthews, drafted first overall a year later — heralded an era of newfound hope. A decade later, they represented the best goal scorer and best playmaker in the team’s history.

But the Maple Leafs’ playoff failures became a different kind of bitter trivia.

When asked if he could reach back to that kid about to embark on a hometown dream, Marner offered a recalibration.

“Just remember to always look for the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “And remember that everything has a purpose and you’ll find it eventually.”

Marner stood in a hallway inside the Golden Knights practice facility in the suburban outskirts of Vegas, wearing team-issued workout gear after a morning skate.

He seemed comfortable and relaxed.

“I’m just super excited,” he said, grinning. “For all aspects of my life.”

Marner’s son Miles was born in May, and fatherhood has allowed him to look at his life and his career through a new lens.

For Canada Day weekend, at the end of June, Marner invited Joe Thornton and his family to his cottage in Muskoka to meet Miles. Thornton became a mentor and close friend when the veteran played briefly at the tail end of his career with the Leafs. A couple days earlier, Thornton learned that he’d been elected to the Hall of Fame, adding another layer to the celebratory family gathering.

“He was holding Miles, playing with him and feeding him,” Marner said. “And his son and daughter were holding him and feeding him, too.”

As with his other mentor, Patrick Marleau, Marner always admired Thornton’s parenting, buzzing around with his kids by the breaking dawn.

“Those guys are phenomenal dads, just how calm and how much fun they have with their kids,” Marner said. “That’s the kind of dad you want to be.”

Thornton also knew something about the value of fresh beginnings. The 6-4 center, known as Jumbo, began his career in Boston as the first overall pick, but was famously traded to the San Jose Sharks mid-season in 2006 — where he then won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s top scorer and Hart Trophy as the league MVP.

“It’s going to give you a new perspective, a new mindset,” Thornton told Marner about leaving Toronto. “And that’s always good. It’s never a bad thing, just to start fresh sometimes and turn a page.”

Joe Thornton, who found huge success after leaving the team that drafted him, encouraged Mitch Marner to “turn a page.” Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images

That Monday, Marner signed with the Golden Knights.

He spoke with Stone, the Golden Knights captain, and Eichel, their scoring leader, shortly afterward and received some advice about where to settle his new world. Marner and his wife, Steph, house hunted for five days before landing in Summerlin, a suburb of Vegas close to the Golden Knights practice facility.

After returning to Muskoka for a bit more solitude, Marner, Steph and Miles flew southwest to their new life in the Mojave Desert in September.

“It feels a lot lighter, in a way,” Marner said, of this new beginning. “There were some dark times in the last couple of years.”

Several years ago, Marner tapped into an interest in Greek mythology. His full right forearm carries a tattoo of Zeus — and he later named the family’s chocolate Labrador after the Pantheon ruler whose true destiny wasn’t fulfilled until he left home.

At their new home near the foothills of the Spring Mountains, the 80-pound momma’s boy pup — from whom the couple have matching Z tattoos, inked on a whim in Spain — has taken to curling up on Marner’s side of the bed now that baby Miles, amid a 4-month sleep regression, has claimed the other half.

“I don’t like it,” Marner said. But it’s another unexpected joy of life as a dad.

In Summerlin, they take family walks together, the four of them — in a place where Marner sees so much possibility for his family, outside in the constant, quiet summer. The new parents talk a lot about what they want for their son, and they agree that they won’t force him to play hockey.

Marner never played baseball as a kid, he said. Maybe Miles will — who knows? The boy will find his own passions. There is so much time ahead.

“I hope that whatever experiences or whatever he wants to do in life, I hope we can support him and help him out to try to fulfill it,” Marner said.

“I’m going to let him do what he wants.”

(Top photo: Zak Krill / Getty Images)