A mea culpa for Marner: Why the star now makes more sense for the Golden Knights

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

The Golden Knights did it again earlier this week, successfully pursuing the NHL’s best available player for what feels like the umpteenth time by bringing Mitch Marner to town.

Who could possibly have been against adding one of the league’s best wingers to pair with one of its best centers, Jack Eichel, in a quest to win another Stanley Cup?

Well, this is awkward. Here’s where I must sheepishly raise my hand.

Less than a month ago, on June 12, I wrote a column expressing reservations about Vegas landing the 28-year-old, three-time All Star from the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Here comes the backtrack.

In my defense, the calculus has changed since then.

My concerns were threefold — that the Golden Knights would have to overpay him, overhaul the rest of the roster and roll the dice in terms of stylistic fit.

The third reason is the only pertinent worry left.

A lot can shift between one NHL season ending and another one beginning — the 2025-2026 campaign for all intents and purposes got underway with the draft on June 27 and the start of free agency Tuesday — and it certainly did for the Golden Knights.

The roster issue largely cleared itself up with star defenseman Alex Pietrangelo moving to long-term injured reserve and all but officially retiring because of chronic hip injuries. Losing a future Hall of Famer, alternate captain and stalwart defenseman like Pietrangelo is no minor hit, but these outcomes occur with aging athletes.

Pietrangelo’s play had declined the last couple years, and he’s set to turn 36 years old next season. Getting him off the books for the rest of the team to fit under the salary cap with Marner is easier to swallow than trading someone like Tomas Hertl, William Karlsson or Shea Theodore for little return.

Those were some of the names linked in national reports of how the Golden Knights could financially secure Marner, but they were never real options, according to Kelly McCrimmon. Vegas’ general manager lashed out at those accounts and called them “shameful” at Marner’s introductory news conference earlier this week.

“I’ve got to phone William Karlsson and say, ‘Karly, I’m sorry you’ve got to go through this (expletive),’ (and) ‘Tomas, you’re not for trade, relax.’” McCrimmon griped. “It’s ridiculous.”

Because of Pietrangelo’s exit and the $7.5 million rise in the salary cap to $95.5 million, the Golden Knights needed only to trade a pair of depth pieces — center Nic Roy (to Toronto) and defenseman Nic Hague (to Nashville) — to make it easier to be cap compliant.

Both are notable departures, but the Golden Knights were never going to be able to pay Hague anything near the $5.5 million per year he’s making with the Predators as a restricted free agent. Roy’s surplus-value contract of $5 million per year is harder to see go, but it’s a small price to pay to upgrade to an elite player just now in his prime, like Marner.

“We always felt (Roy) was a great competitive advantage as a fourth-line center,” McCrimmon said. “But, when you look at Eichel, Hertl and Karlsson ahead of him, we almost looked at it as a bit of a luxury. We wanted to improve our team on the wings.”

Roy wound up as collateral to make that happen. Most importantly, moving him was necessary to ensure it happened as cheaply as possible for the Golden Knights.

The biggest reason why Marner coming to Vegas is more of a positive than I ever imagined is because the franchise got him at a discount.

Players at his level tend to start bidding wars when they hit free agency and end up getting outrageous deals that hamstring the “winner” of the sweepstakes for years to come. Some speculation indicated Marner could have drawn up to $14 million per year on the open market.

The Golden Knights avoided that scenario by attaching Roy to a sign-and-trade with the Maple Leafs, which gave Marner an eight-year, $96 million extension in advance of the swap going through.

Marner would have only been eligible to sign for seven seasons in free agency, and his salary expectations without the extra year of security might have been a dealbreaker for Vegas, especially up against teams with more cap space.

“If it was a seven-year contract to get to $96 million, you’ve got an (average annual value) of $13.7 million, and that really impacts our ability to take the player onto our team,” McCrimmon said. “One of the things that's important for us with every signing that we make, with every decision that we make, it's about building a team that can win the Stanley Cup. So, you have to be able to have people in all roles and all positions in your lineup to be able to win.”

The $1.7 million annual difference might not sound like much, but it’s monumental in a league with a hard cap like the NHL especially with a potentially even richer extension for Eichel also likely coming this offseason.

The major question now is whether Marner brings the Golden Knights closer to a championship as McCrimmon is selling.

Marner was run out of his hometown Toronto in a scenario he admitted he once hoped would never come in part because of his underperformance in the playoffs.

The Golden Knights’ largest hurdle this season and even historically aside from the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoff run has been having a go-to scorer to lean on in the biggest moments. Marner is unlikely to fix that based on his first nine seasons in the league where he’s been a much better facilitator than scorer.

McCrimmon even poked fun at that reputation by joking that someone between Eichel and Marner — both pass-first players — is “going to have to shoot.”

But he also inferred that any offensive hiccups might be outweighed by Marner’s defensive prowess. The newcomer to Vegas is known as one of the best forwards in the league on that side of the ice.

Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy has always preferred to build his teams with more of a defensive than offensive backbone anyway.

Marner gives Cassidy more than enough to work with and repeatedly expressed that his desire to win at the highest level trumps everything else.

Those don’t feel like empty words considering Marner likely could have secured more money if he hadn't given a green light to the move to Vegas.

So, even though the situation was much different than anticipated, I’ll say it — I was wrong.

Marner was meant to be a Golden Knight.

“You want to be in a place where you win,” Marner said. “That’s the whole goal and why we do this: You want to hoist that Stanley Cup. This team has shown that they can do it. I’m lucky enough to hopefully be another piece to help bring it back here.”