LAS VEGAS — There really is no place like home.
The home Mitch Marner chose to make his own last summer doesn’t quite feel like home just yet.
“I think you fight that in a way still,” Marner said in a one-on-one interview with The Athletic following practice one day in mid-December. “But I think we’re really close. I think we’ve got everything that we want and need here, and (we’re) making it feel like home in a way.”
“But yeah, I don’t know,” he went on with some uncertainty in his voice. “It’s starting to feel like home now.”
Home in Vegas is nothing like the place Marner knew for the first 28 years of his life.
Replacing the city, snow, outdoor rinks and parkas of hockey-mad Toronto are palm trees, cacti, casinos and overwhelming sunshine.
City National Arena, where Marner’s new team, the Vegas Golden Knights, practice is a gold-and-black splattered facility dotted with casino advertisements. The picturesque Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is just up the road. The Toronto Blue Jays don’t play here, but the Las Vegas Aviators of the Pacific Coast League do.
Marner and his family live in Summerlin, a quiet community 20 minutes from the Strip.
Unlike in Toronto, Marner can be anonymous here in the land of Criss Angel, Wayne Newton and any number of star-studded residences such as Jennifer Lopez or the Backstreet Boys. He can be free of the criticism that came with life as a star for his hometown Maple Leafs — but also the adoration he once described as God-like.
This, of course, is what he wanted. It had become clear well before last June’s breakup that Marner was no longer happy performing for his hometown team.
The picture that emerged from a three-day visit last month to Nevada is that finding happiness in the desert hasn’t come easy either. The 28-year-old looked and sounded somewhat out of his element, unsettled and isolated in his new life, and missing home in more ways than one. His transition, on and off the ice, has been far from seamless.
His split from the Leafs, and from Toronto, has been complicated.
No place like home
Marner hops onto the ice for practice on a Monday morning in December in the mood for fun.
From Day 1 of the franchise’s existence, Golden Knights owner Bill Foley proclaimed that fans would forever be free to watch practice. So the couple dozen fans in attendance on this particular day look on as Marner noodles around for warmups with a left-handed stick, the wrong-handed stick for the right-shooting Marner.
Marner has always tried to seek out joy wherever he could find it during the long NHL season. Despite his best efforts, it’s evident that he’s still trying to locate it here, in Vegas, his new home, with the Golden Knights, his new team.
Asked just that, if he was happier these days, Marner responded, “Here?” before adding, “I was happy regardless.”
Waking up to sunshine every day sure was nice, Marner said when asked about the best part of his new home. He loved that he could walk his dog, Zeus, in a pair of shorts in the middle of winter. But then, without prompting, Marner brought up the snow and how much he missed it. He wondered what Christmas would feel like without it. He was taken aback by how early allergy season arrived in Nevada. The dryness that came with life in the desert also took some getting used to.
“Make sure you got ChapStick ready,” Marner was shrewdly told on arrival.
City National Arena is Mitch Marner’s new home for hockey practice. He lives just five minutes away. (Jonas Siegel / The Athletic)
Not having friends and family close by has been disorienting.
They were always just there before — attending his games for the Maple Leafs or watching on TV, and always ready to hang out at a moment’s notice.
“Now, it’s more FaceTime calls and trying to book trips and plan times for people to come out and visit you,” Marner said.
Sunday mornings had become FaceTime mornings, a once-a-week opportunity to connect with everyone back home.
The three-hour time difference meant that when he got home from a game with the Golden Knights, he couldn’t play video games with his buddies like he did when he was still a Leaf. They were usually asleep.
“That’s the part I think you miss the most is not being around your family as much,” Marner said, “and not being able to see them every day.”
The perks of life out here hadn’t grown on Marner just yet.
He’s not much of a hiker and has strolled around Red Rock Canyon only a couple times with his wife’s family. And with an infant son at home, and the early mornings that come with that, trips to the Strip have been only for games with the Golden Knights.
There were certainly parts about home that Marner wasn’t pining for.
“I don’t miss the Gardiner at all,” he said, referring to the often-clogged expressway that runs adjacent to the Maple Leafs’ facilities in Toronto — though he had also heard that it wasn’t as bad as it used to be.
Marner lives only five minutes from the practice rink in Summerlin.
His teammates are all close by too, which has made for easy hangouts, quiet walks around the neighbourhood with the dogs, wives and kids.
The media contingent, and by extension, the media pressure, is significantly less here, too. When I made my way into the Golden Knights dressing room following practice, Marner was being interviewed in front of his stall by exactly one reporter from Fox5 News.
Many of the small cluster of media are employed by the team itself.
Marner found that shocking at first, the lack of cameras and microphones around. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.
“It’s been weird,” Marner said of his new life in Vegas, “but nice.”
Fans from the Toronto area have made a point of visiting to watch Marner as a Golden Knight. (David Becker / NHLI via Getty Images)
On-ice struggles
Even here, more than 3,500 kilometers away, reminders from home greet Marner.
It’s Dec. 17 and Marner is warming up to face the New Jersey Devils, coached by his longtime Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe, when a young fan stands behind the glass with a sign for Marner that reads: “We came from Toronto to see you. Can we please have a puck?”
Marner executes the same joyful warmup routine from his near-decade run with the Leafs, only it’s Tomas Hertl he trades passes with before the final horn blows instead of Auston Matthews.
Before he skates off, Marner flips a puck to the fan from back home.
Marner doesn’t record a point that night against the Devils. A give-and-go with Mark Stone doesn’t quite make it across the goal line and Marner, the last Vegas shooter in the shootout, can’t quite beat Jake Allen.
The Golden Knights lose 2-1.
“The colors are significantly different,” said Keefe afterward of facing Marner the Golden Knight.
And so is almost everything else.
Marner has bounced around the Golden Knights lineup in a way he never did as a Leaf.
He has played left wing and right wing and even center at times for the first time in his NHL career amid injuries.
Marner has had stints playing next to Jack Eichel and Hertl, and even Vegas’ third-line center, Brett Howden.
“Absolutely,” Vegas’ head coach Bruce Cassidy said when asked if it had been a process trying to find the right place in the lineup for Marner.
“I don’t want to go through everybody” that Marner had played with, Cassidy added.
The implication was obvious: It was a long list, one that also included Stone, a fellow right winger and Canadian Olympian.
The fit with Eichel, in particular, hasn’t worked as they might have hoped.
As Cassidy noted, both liked to have the puck. “So is that gonna be a partnership (that works)? It is when they’re moving it together, but what happens when only one of them (has it)?”
Marner spent the first nine seasons of his career with Matthews, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly, and the last six with John Tavares, building a level of chemistry that couldn’t be replicated in mere months.
“We’re still learning Mitch,” Cassidy said. “Where he wants the puck, when he wants the puck.”
The fit between Marner and Jack Eichel hasn’t been as immediately successful as Vegas had hoped. (Candice Ward / Getty Images)
Marner has been adjusting too — to life without Matthews, his longtime center, in particular.
“It’s slowly getting there,” he said. “I think there’s been a couple times where it hasn’t been the prettiest looking thing. There’s also been times where it looks unreal.”
It was subtle stuff built on hundreds of games and practices together, like where and when Matthews liked to get the puck and vice-versa.
“I can watch it on video,” Cassidy said, “and go, ‘Yeah, he likes it here.’ The players have to see it in real time and have a comfort level with making the plays to him.”
Marner preferred to shoot up to the top of the offensive zone, “so the D have to be wide in that case,” said Vegas’ coach. “But Jack, he likes it on the half-wall, so they gotta shift and get him the puck. So there’s a bit of a learning curve right now. I think our guys are getting it.”
Cassidy pointed to a December game in Columbus when defenseman Brayden McNabb slid down from the point as Marner circled up to the top.
Marner shoveled him the puck and McNabb promptly beat Blue Jackets netminder Jet Greaves.
“Hopefully as every month goes by, we get more and more comfortable with that,” said Cassidy.
The Golden Knights don’t lean on Marner as the Leafs did. He is drawing the fewest shifts per game of his NHL career.
Cassidy would like to keep Marner around 20 minutes most nights. He prefers to use his bench evenly, including on the penalty kill, where Marner no longer plays a headlining role.
Marner feels a little less essential to the Golden Knights that way. He didn’t even get on the ice in overtime during a recent game in Chicago, as Cassidy went with Eichel and Stone initially instead.
Tyler Bertuzzi scored soon after Pavel Dorofeyev replaced Stone.
And while Vegas owns a top-five power play, Marner, typically the top unit’s quarterback, has factored into the scoring at the lowest rate of his career — nabbing a point on only 39 percent of the goals. (Last season in Toronto, that number was 73 percent.)
Bunch it all together — new teammates, new system, changes in deployment, Vegas’ occasional scoring struggles amid a challenging season that’s only started to get better recently — and it makes sense that Marner is having his worst offensive season since he was a 20-year-old sophomore with the Leafs.
“Obviously a lot of people just look at the offensive stuff and want you to put up a bunch of points. That’s what you want from yourself as well in a way,” Marner said. “But I’m really happy with the defensive side of it.”
Marner’s defensive metrics are, indeed, elite and should put him in the running for the Selke Trophy once again as the league’s top defensive forward.
“He could probably play defense if he wanted to, honestly,” McNabb observed.
Told that he once kind of did with the Leafs, McNabb responded, “I don’t blame them. He’s just got that mind for the game.”
Cassidy has found himself marveling at the way Marner wields his stick defensively, how he “baits” opponents into giving him the puck.
Marner’s new teammates have marveled at his defensive skills. (Rob Gray / Imagn Images)
Even Stone, a longtime Ottawa Senators rival who thought he knew everything there was to know about Marner, has found himself in awe at the way he makes defensemen “look kind of stupid” with head fakes and incomparable instincts.
Stone was reminded of a game in New York when he got Marner the puck in the slot and assumed he would rip it on goal. Marner had other plans. He spotted Howden in his sideview mirror and slipped him the puck for an easy tap-in goal.
Standing behind the bench, Cassidy often tries to figure out what players will do in real time. That’s been tough with Marner.
“Some of the plays he makes,” Vegas’ coach said, “I’m like, man, how did he see that guy?”
Fitting in
Marner left a team and town with a tortured history for one that knew only success without him.
Reminders of the Golden Knights’ 2023 Stanley Cup are everywhere, like in the giant photo of William Karlsson clutching the Cup above the entrance to the practice facility in Summerlin.
A dozen players from the Cup squad remain, including franchise pillars such as Stone, the team’s captain. McNabb, Shea Theodore and Karlsson have been with the franchise since Day 1.
Marner’s No. 93 jersey can be seen sporadically throughout the crowd at T-Mobile Arena. (Jonas Siegel / The Athletic)
Their gold and black jerseys dot the stands of fans at T-Mobile Arena alongside those of stars such as Eichel, as well as popular players from past and present such as Ivan Barbashev, Alex Pietrangelo, Noah Hanifin, Nate Schmidt and Ryan Reaves.
Marner’s No. 93 Golden Knights’ jersey was sprinkled sporadically throughout the crowd that night against the Devils.
In Toronto, where hockey is king, Marner was the guy at the top of the marquee. He wore the “A” of an alternate captain, picked tunes in the dressing room and planned team parties. He scattered his name throughout the franchise record book, logged more minutes than anyone and was a go-to for media in the big moments.
In Vegas, where hockey is merely one source of entertainment among many, Marner joined a successful show already in progress. He’s a star, certainly, but a new one from a distant land trying to find his place within a team and culture that was already well-established without him.
And doing it all away from home.
“He’d been in Toronto for — how old is he? — 28 years right, been in the Toronto, Ont., area,” said Stone. “It’s definitely an adjustment moving away from family for the first time.”
Even the small stuff took some getting used to, like with whom to grab dinner on the road.
Told that Jake Muzzin, his former teammate and close friend in Toronto, once mentioned that it took him a few months to feel comfortable with the Leafs following a long run with the Los Angeles Kings, Marner said, “I think Muzz probably hit that on the head in a way.”
“It kinda is like that in a way, to feel part of the group.”
The process of integrating began during training camp when the Golden Knights made their annual two-day pilgrimage to Foley’s Montana ranch for some golf and team bonding.
“It’s probably about the two best days of the year,” McNabb said.
In October, Marner attended UFC 320 with Eichel, Hanifin and some of his new teammates. Later that month, the Marners volunteered to host the team’s Halloween party in the basement of their new home.
“That stuff can bring you together too,” Stone said. “All the new guys — (and) their wives or girlfriends — have never really met before, so a few drinks and it really brings the life out of everybody.”
The Marners dressed as characters from the Vegas-themed film, “The Hangover”: Mitch as Stu, his wife, Stephanie, as Zach Galifianakis’ zany Alan, and Miles as baby Carlos, sunglasses and all, “which was hilarious,” Marner said.
Growing pains were probably inevitable. They are for most players joining a new team.
Marner was so rooted in Toronto, and to the Maple Leafs, that a split was bound to be even harder.
Feelings haven’t healed just yet either. Asked if he would still cheer for the Leafs, the team he grew up rooting for long before he was drafted in 2015, the team he became a star for, the team he grew up with, the team where some of his closest friends in hockey remain, Marner said no.
“I don’t root for any team other than my own,” said Marner. “I’m only rooting for my team. That’s who I want to win.”
This is home now.
