Trouble just caught up to Mitch Marner and fans are furious.

Mitch Marner had a strong Stanley Cup run for the Golden Knights, right up until it mattered most. Then the old criticism came roaring back.

Drew Livingstone laid it out cold. Over the final three games of the Final, Marner posted zero goals, one assist and a minus-5. All three were losses. "Just folded in crunch time."

The timing is what guts you. Those were the games Vegas needed, and the Golden Knights came up empty, watching the Cup get lifted on their own ice.

Here's the cruel twist, though. It wasn't a bad run overall. Marner racked up 22 points in 17 playoff games, with a plus-12 and two game-winners. He was excellent for most of it.

He'd even had a hat trick earlier in the Final. The talent absolutely showed up, then vanished in the final act.

The stat line from those last three games is the one that'll follow him.

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The Toronto playoff ghosts followed Marner to Vegas

The money makes the silence louder. Marner carries a $12 million cap hit, the kind of contract that demands production when the Cup is on the table.

And this is the exact narrative he spent years fighting in Toronto. A regular-season star, an 80-point, plus-17 player, dogged every spring by questions about shrinking in the playoffs.

He left for Vegas and a clean slate. For three rounds, it looked like he'd rewritten the ending. Then the final three games happened.

So the story reopens. The player critics labeled a crunch-time no-show just went quiet on the biggest stage there is, in a Cup Final loss.

Here's my read, with the nuance it deserves. One cold stretch doesn't erase 22 playoff points, and no single player loses a Final by himself. The team fell short, not just Marner.

But stars on $12 million deals get judged by the last three games, not the first fourteen. That's the brutal math of being the headliner.

Marner finally reached a Cup Final and came up empty when it counted most. That's a heavy thing to carry into next season.

The questions won't quiet on their own. They never have for him, and this Final just handed his critics fresh ammunition.

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