#2023-24

"mitch marner's getting a lot of attention. obviously he plays in a hot button market. what do you make out of that whole situation, when you watch a player like him with his ability and, in the playoffs it just seems like, I know he's under the microscope-"

"careful, careful."

"yeah."

"careful. their power play was one for twenty."

"yeah."

"is that his fault?"

"no."

"who's?"

"that's what I was going to ask you, is it all his fault? like he, does he take too much heat?"

"well, who's?"

"well, he's part of the power play."

"yeah. he's part of it, yeah. so this is once, once again, a slippery slope, right?"

"yeah, yeah."

"because who's helping him? who's giving him a lifeline? that's an incredibly difficult market, as we know."

"yeah."

"so matthews only got one, tavares only got one, nylander only got one, he only got one. so, why is he the fall guy every year, right? and, and yeah, he's got to take some responsibility himself, of course."

"11 million. that's probably why, they look, they look at his salary, right?"

"yeah. so, so here's another thing, too. so like, let's say the d doesn't break them out. let's say, because we got four front loaded contracts, our d don't break us out. is that marner's fault? we have to produce when we don't get the puck past center [unintelligible]."

"what if he asked for less money?"

"what's that?"

"what if he asked for less money? maybe you can get another defenseman [laughs]."

"maybe [laughs]."

"I mean, I think he's taking heat too, 'cause there's a video of him just kind of like, going and doing the fly by and stuff like that, so it all kind of built up a little bit."

"so, well, they're also looking for it every single time, right?"

"yeah."

"like when nylander yelled at him. well, nylander, first of all, you don't play against everybody's best. you play against everybody's second best. let's get that straight. let's get that straight. you don't play against the best every night. you play against three four. number one. number two, he was mad at matthews for a bad turnover at the blue line. that's what he's mad at. and he's [mitch] also mad and he threw his gloves, why? because he knows tomorrow in the paper, they're going to blame him [mitch]. right? now, some of it, for sure, is on him. for sure. but who's helping him? like the power play was one for twenty. if they were five for twenty, they'd still be playing right now. and he'd have three more points, four more points, they wouldn't be complaining right now, would they? so therefore now you're gonna look at the power play. of course. well, that's two units, ten guys and one coach, right? and the head coach. so like, it's never a one guy, and I feel bad for him, 'cause he's in that market, right? that makes it very difficult. and then, the winning goal, pastrnak's goal, they they're blaming him. and it's like, if anything, if anybody knows anything about hockey, they were in a neutral zone regroup. so the f1 changed, he jumped over for f1. pastrnak's not his responsibility at all!"

"who's is it? d-man's?"

"yeah, it's a combination of all five guys in terms of how we're trying to slow down the neutral zone forecheck, right? so they threw the puck across the rink and the d that went up missed the poke check. that contributes. let the guy, let the guy make a cross corner dump. morgan rielly pivoted the wrong way. and the d were flat footed. the d were flat footed because f1 didn't do his job right. and janssen knows, we worked for, he played for pete deboer, I worked for pete. how much time do we spend on neutral zone forecheck? every day!"

"oh yeah."

"every day. 'cause you don't want these little hiccups. and the goalie probably could have come out and poke checked it."

"yeah, that was another thing. I'm glad you said that because I feel like-"

"I'm mad, honestly, I'm mad that no one in toronto has come out and said, 'hey, that was a neutral zone forecheck. that's not mitch. stop trying to blame him for everything.'"

"well, 'cause they, they just want to get so emotional and, you know-"

"but management should have. sheldon keefe should have come out and said, 'stop, that's not his responsibility.'"

"or, or maybe john tavares, who's who's got the c on his jersey. somebody. you know-"

"I get that."