Marner eager to begin new chapter with Golden Knights

The first person in the Marner family to put on a spiffy new Mitch Marner No. 93 Vegas Golden Knights jersey Tuesday was, interestingly, not Mitch Marner.

No, that honor went to wee Miles Marner, all of 58 days old, the pride and joy of dad Mitch and mom Stephanie.

“The actual first time I saw (the Vegas 93) jersey on someone was on my son,” Marner said at his Golden Knights introductory press conference on Tuesday. “Me and my wife put it on him at the hotel.

“It was a really special moment.”

A moment that signified the official end of the Marner era in Toronto.

And the beginning of a new one in Vegas.

Miles was on hand to witness his dad’s fresh start, sitting with Stephanie and Mitch’s parents, Paul and Bonnie, for Marner’s introduction in Vegas just hours after his acquisition had been officially announced. Thanks to a sign-and-trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Marner, freshly armed with an eight-year, $96 million contract (average annual value $12 million), joins a Vegas team with a winning pedigree, having hoisted the Stanley Cup just two years ago.

He may have played with high-end players in Toronto like Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly but they could never translate talent into postseason success, winning just two series together. Marner, like the rest of that core group with the Maple Leafs, regularly underachieved during playoff time, but the Golden Knights are confident they have the cast of championship players around him that can help change the narrative that he can’t win when it matters.

So much so, in fact, that Marner was Vegas’s priority No. 1, no matter how successful the Golden Knights already were.

“We would have pursued Mitch Marner [even] if we’d won the Stanley Cup,” Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said of the talented wing who finished fifth in the NHL last season with 102 points. “He’s a world-class talent.”

He was treated as such by the Golden Knights upon his arrival in Vegas on Monday. He and his family were greeted by a band and cheerleaders in the team offices, all the while accompanied by the loud cheers and clapping of the team employees on hand.

It was yet another indication how much the Golden Knights wanted him.

And, in the end, how much he wanted the Golden Knights.

“Obviously the winning regimen they’ve put up through the past five years, really since they’ve been in the League,” Marner said when simply asked: “Why Vegas?”

“They’ve got such a competitive team every year. They’ve got some good players here.”

In researching Vegas as a possible landing spot, he picked the brains of two of his former Maple Leafs teammates, Max Pacioretty and Ryan Reaves two former Golden Knights. They told him Vegas was a great place to both play and bring up a family.

“You know, the living arrangements, from talking to ‘Patches’ and ‘Revo’ the past couple of weeks, it seemed like everything was a pretty good fit for my wife and I and our new son,” he said. “And the winning aspect of this team helped as well, the great players they have.

“Lucky enough, it all worked out. And you know, this is where we wanted to be.”

For the longest time in his life, Marner had said that about Toronto. Born and bred in the area, he grew up a Maple Leafs fan and wanted badly to one day play for his hometown team.

Now he was closing that chapter of his life, an occasion he once thought would never happen.

“I think my whole mindset, the whole time I was in Toronto, was that it would be tough to leave Toronto,” Marner said. “To be honest, I didn’t ever think it would come to that day.”

Until it did.

Indeed, with every increasing playoff failure, the speculation in Toronto heightened. He was aware of how there were calls from the public to break up the Maple Leafs’ so-called Core Four, which also included Tavares, Matthews and Nylander. With the six-year, $65.358 million deal ($10.9 million AAV) he signed on Sept. 19, 2019, ending on Monday, he understood he might be a candidate to leave.

Some of the scrutiny was deserved. Some, including having trash dumped on his lawn, was not.

“Last year in Toronto, or two years ago, really, stuff kind of, we didn’t win, we didn’t do what we wanted to do,” he recalled, struggling to find the right words. “Stuff started going, you know, a little north, a little south. We didn’t know what was going to happen. A lot of trade rumors last summer. We didn’t know what was going to happen in that regard either.

“As soon as (2024-25) started up, we were ready to come in and play hockey and see what would happen. But, at the same time, we were willing to take it the distance (to free agency). We kind of told Toronto that that was our plan. And it was.

“I was so grateful to play there for nine years. I said at my end-of-the-year interview there that they took a risky chance on a small kid from Toronto that is forever grateful to have worn that Maple Leafs jersey. But now, being a family man, a father, we thought it was time to look somewhere else and find a new home and find a new place to grow our family.”

For McCrimmon, the possibility of that place being Vegas was a concept that he pursued back at the March 7 trade deadline. Both Marner and McCrimmon said the Maple Leafs and Golden Knights were in discussions at the time as part of a three-way trade that would have seen the Toronto forward end up in Sin City only to have it scuttled because of too many moving parts. Various reports suggest the third party was the Carolina Hurricanes, who would have sent forward Mikko Rantanen to the Maple Leafs as part of the transaction.

Marner, armed with a no-movement clause in his contract, didn’t want to relocate his pregnant wife at the time. At the same time, he learned just how much interest the Golden Knights had in him.

To that end, McCrimmon, knowing other teams were planning to go to Toronto and make in-person pitches to woo Marner come the opening of free agency on Tuesday, wasn’t about to wait around. He completed a sign-and-trade swap with the Maple Leafs on Friday night, a transaction that sent Marner’s rights to Vegas for forward Nicolas Roy.

The team holding his rights was the only one that could offer him the maximum eight years up until noon ET on Tuesday; after that, every team could only offer as many as seven.

“I didn’t want him to get to market,” McCrimmon said. “I thought that eighth year was important. Once the trade was made, I reached out to his agent to see if we could get something done contract wise before (July 1).

“Fortunately, it did.”

All that remains is the question: Can Marner leave behind the baggage that accrued in Toronto in recent years and be part of a championship team, a task that requires elevated play in the playoffs?

Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy thinks he can. And he feels Golden Knights forward Jack Eichel will be a huge part in helping Marner make that happen.

“Jack took his share of criticism when he was with the Buffalo Sabres,” Cassidy told NHL.com from Vegas on Tuesday. “They said there that, even though he was skilled, he didn’t know how to win. I mean, I remember going back there to Buffalo after he’d joined us, and he was booed every time he touched the puck. It was unreal. We wanted to win so badly for him.

“Mitch was criticized some in Toronto too. Jack knows what that’s like. Jack rebounded and won a Cup here. Not bad for a guy people said wasn’t a winner. And now he can help Mitch in that regard.”

Cassidy’s early plan is to have Eichel and Marner play on the same line. Marner is no stranger to lining up with elite centers, having flanked Matthews for a good chunk of his Maple Leafs career.

“Jack needs someone to keep up with him, and Mitch is someone who can do just that,” Cassidy said. “I coached against Mitch when I was with the Boston Bruins, and I always thought he was the motor that made the Leafs go. And I was impressed with him when I was an assistant with Canada for the 4 Nations. He was a very receptive player.”

Now, coach and player are reunited, this time with Vegas.

“I’m so grateful for this opportunity,” Marner said, wearing an omnipresent smile.

The Golden Knights are more than happy to provide him with one.