In my defence the article was in my local paper. I got hooked on the headline, and I'd read some of it before I realized it was a Steve Simmons opinion piece ostensibly about Mitch Marner, but not really, more about how the fans turned on him. And before I rolled my eyes and quit reading there was this bit about how someone should have taught Mitch Marner to speak to the media better and how everything he said was taken the wrong way and over-analyzed and... wait... that's his fault now?

I've heard this before, of course, recently, of course, not back when the fights were between people who said he was better than Auston Matthews and the people who thought that was absurd. Back then, no one complained about his post-game comments.

Once you fall out of love with someone, everything they do is grating. It's not him, it's you that makes everything into a negative. The article was actually about love, and how the fans didn't love him enough. As if love is always needed as a bulwark against vitriol and hate, dehumanization, bitter anger and resentment. You can actually talk about Mitch Marner, his time on the Leafs, his contracts, his play, his playoffs, even his media relations abilities without extremes of emotion. You don't need to love him to not hate him. You don't need to spit venom as the only alternative to devotion.

But you sure wouldn't know that from a case study of Mitch Marner and Leafs fans.

I've written a lot about Marner over the years, not all of it glowing praise. I was genuinely angry after the Montréal series, but I've never hated him. I've never met him and I don't know him. He sure was fun to watch this year, and he was good in the playoffs.

Once, I got so fed up with the situation where any neutral comment about him led to a pile on of people preaching the gospel of Marner as the dark centre of rot on the Leafs, that I wrote an actual manifesto thing about my personal feelings about him. Only the Dubas exit caused more of this sort of thing.

I have theories on why Marner in particular drew this outsized devotion and then this outsized anti-fandom status he might never shake. The passionate nature of fan reaction to him practically screams out that there are cultural and societal reasons at play. But there's not a lot of point in worrying over the causes when the cat's out of the bag, and it's socially acceptable to trash him as a man. I find this the most uncomfortable thing about any kind of fandom. The purpose of sports, for many people, is to designate a hate object and wallow in the black emotions. Passion's dark side, I suppose.

I wrote an article that said the right thing to do was to trade Marner before his NMC kicked in in 2023. Then I wrote about how not doing that was a choice the Leafs made, and there were only three possible outcomes – a contract too big, an exit in free agency with no return, or a trade engineered with his permission. I wrote again about that and how "letting him walk" was a process started years ago. His story has been complicated for a while.

Even when I was suggesting that trading him was a good idea, I didn't think the return would be outstanding. It's hard to come out even on a trade for a very expensive, very elite player, because bad teams that have prospects nearing the NHL don't want that guy, they want their prospects, and good teams don't have anything but firsts that smell like seconds and prospects they drafted with those punky smelling picks in prior years. The Leafs, in other words, couldn't trade for Marner. That drives home why Treliving tried so hard to pull off the Rantanen deal because that sort of thing was never coming around again. Too late, buddy, you should have taken a lesser haul in '23.

Toronto fans need to like their players more. Simmons is not the only one to say this. And well, confession: the phrase "run him out of town" always makes me laugh. It's so self-aggrandizing. As if a bunch of mean people on social media really make the team trade a player or fail to re-sign him. Oh, no, wait, it's a media conspiracy of hate. Even funnier. I find the hate spewed at players distasteful, but I think that is the least of the relationship someone has with a team. Toronto fans loved Jack Campbell and wanted nothing but the best for him. They sang whole Adele songs to him, not just that one line. It didn't make him a good goalie or make the team want to keep him.

It's actually also okay to boo a team that is playing terrible hockey. That's not running anyone anywhere. The Ottawa fans had it right. Mar-ner's Leav-ing. Long before the boos. Maybe some of Marner's reasons seem petty, but they're his reasons. His agency. His relationship with the team behind closed doors that we can't see.

Marner's career, one of the best not-quite-a-decade of play by a Leafs player ever, was overtaken by events. By regime change, by whatever caused them to not trade him and then later try to at a really unlikely time doomed to failure. By coaching changes and losses and injuries and down years and up years. Normal life. It doesn't always come out like a movie with a triumphant ending. His dream came true, he was drafted by his hometown team and then it turned to ash and sour grapes. How it goes sometimes. You either give up or you get a new dream.

A decade ago the question was Marner vs Nylander, and I used to come down solidly on a tie score. After a while Marner pulled ahead, and then just lately Nylander, and now, well now I think again it's a tie.

Go look up Leafs all-time records. You sort of know that the Leafs never tried to be good, rarely had more than one good player, and traded everyone for magic beans. But until you look at the record and see the number of active players climbing higher and higher up the points lists and goal lists, you can lose sight of the change. The team is over a hundred years old, and it's better now than it's ever been. It's not just Mitch Marner the fans don't love enough.

Mitch Marner is fifth on the Leafs for points. All time, you understand. He holds the same rank for the playoffs too. Someday, Auston Matthews and William Nylander will hold all these records. They're only 8 goals away from the playoff goal-scoring crown and they'll get to one-two in points and maybe goals in the regular season. Someday we'll have to remind people there used to be three of them.

Those were the days, we'll say.

Goodbye, Mitch. Live long and prosper.

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