Mitch Marner's exit from the Maple Leafs still comes with baggage, and a Sunday report from Steve Simmons piled on more.
According to Simmons, Toronto handing a rookie signing bonus to Auston Matthews and skipping Marner still stings, even now.
It's a small transactional detail from years ago, but the numbers attached to it aren't small. He sits on a $12,000,000 cap hit in Vegas, Matthews at $13,250,000 in Toronto.
Marner posted 80 points in 81 games with Vegas this season.
The photo running with the report says plenty without a caption. He and Matthews stand shoulder to shoulder in Leafs blue, and neither one is quite looking at the other.
Matthews, meanwhile, is working through a quieter year by his own standard, with 53 points and a minus-4 rating.
Why does a bonus from years ago still cut this deep? Because Marner's thriving somewhere else now, and the Maple Leafs are stuck watching from a distance.
Marner thrives in Vegas while Matthews and Leafs stumble
It's the kind of slight that sits for years, then resurfaces the moment somebody starts winning without you. Toronto's front office still hasn't found a way to make that decision look defensible.
Vegas closed the season with 95 points, good for 13th overall in the league.
The Knights rolled to a 7-0-3 record over their final 10 games, a hot closing kick under head coach Ryan Craig.
General manager Kelly McCrimmon built this roster around the Marner acquisition, and it is paying off.
Toronto finished with 78 points and sat 28th overall in the league.
The Maple Leafs dropped their final seven games of the season under first-year head coach Jim Hiller.
Toronto lost its finale 1-3 at Ottawa. Vegas won its finale 4-1 over Seattle.
Simmons has made a career out of needling Original Six front offices, and the report citing him had drawn 555,000 views by Sunday afternoon.
Toronto's old signing-bonus math just handed him another one to work with.
Whether the Maple Leafs ever address it publicly is a different question, and one nobody in that front office seems eager to answer.
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Should the Maple Leafs have given Mitch Marner the same signing bonus as Auston Matthews?
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