If only Marner didn't have that pesky NMC.

EDITED: I forgot about the Elvis part of the buyout/signing/trade. Modified slightly to add him instead of Rittich, lowered Dewar and Fischer cap hits.

Explain to me why Marner would go to CBJ. Even if he wants out of TOR, that is not a team I expect him to be willing to waive for unless their extension offer is the best.

That's why it would be contingent on Marner waiving for Columbus. Leafs fans seem hellbent on sending him here anyway, it's not that much of a stretch of the imagination to think he'd be okay with being the highest-paid player on an up-and-coming team that should be pushing for the playoffs at the start of his extension.

We give him nearly $100M like he wants, no problem for the cap. And we're only a year or two away from competing, in a low-stress market. He's the guy on a young team with a window to compete that's just opening.

It's unlikely, yes, but crazier things have happened. I've just seen so many Marner-to-Columbus deals involving 4OA/Jiricek/etc. that I wanted to make one that was actually feasible for Columbus.

Aside from Gaudreau (which still has me scratching my head), has any in-demand player voluntarily chosen to play in Columbus? There seems to be a long trail of players demanding their way out of town.

Nathan Horton, although it ended badly for health reasons. And Zach Werenski fired his agent to ensure he could stay.

Werenski was a RFA, so he didn't have free reign to sign anywhere.

I'll even give you Damon Severson, who I had forgotten about when I made my post.

Now reconcile that with all the players that had no interest in re-signing there and/or were disgruntled playing there. Bobrovsky, Panarin, Duchene, Gaborik, Carter, Dzingel, Dubois. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Nearly half your examples are erroneous. We walked away from Duchene, Gaborik, and Dzingel, not the other way around.

That's not what I recall:



Gaborik was disgruntled playing there, which is why they ended up practically giving him to LA after giving up a haul to acquire him.

I don't remember well enough about Dzingel to contest that one, but my memory is that he chose not to re-sign there.

Doesn't match what I remember, but either way literally everyone managing that team has since been replaced.

Bob wanted money, Panarin only wanted the Rangers, Duchene only wanted Nashville, Carter was a decade ago and mad Philly screwed him over by trading him just before a no-trade clause kicked in, Dzingel is not remotely a relevant example as he isn't a fraction the caliber of player the rest of this list is (and was also very much allowed to walk), and Dubois is eliminated immediately by your own criteria because he was an RFA.

I mean, carry on. Why let us try to correct you, the meme is way funnier.

If your examples are a player with a very specific destination he was set on (Panarin), two guys from a decade ago (Gaborik, Carter), two UFA TDL rentals (Dzingel, Duchene), and two players who, at different times, chased money and were/are widely regarded as one of the worst contracts in the league (Bob, Dubois)...maybe the narrative doesn't fit.

I mean, just last year the Leafs failed to retain Bunting, O'Reilly, Holl, Lafferty, Acciari, and Gustaffson. Should we start looking into the "no one wants to stay in Toronto" narrative? No, of course not.

But there are numerous examples from all of these other teams where players choose these teams over other suitors. Panarin and Fox chose New York over an entire league looking to woo them. John Tavares chose Toronto even though San Jose offered him more money. Sure you can say he only wanted to sign with his hometown team, but that's the point. There's not a lot of NHLers from Ohio.

If it were just a few examples of players choosing other teams over Columbus, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, until you realize that no one really ever chooses Columbus. Gaudreau is the exception. Horton too, I guess. Most other teams have a ton of counterexamples.

I mean, sure, there's not a lot of players from Ohio yet that are signing in Columbus because it's the hometown team, but...that also almost never happens? Tavares was an exception, not a rule.

The reasons not to sign in Columbus are because it's one of the newest franchises in the league, hasn't had a ton of success, and is a historically smaller market operating on an internal cap. That could be any franchise, and the budget/internal cap is finally changing as the market grows. The only reason Florida isn't looked at the same way is because of the beach and tax situation.

Hell, far more players have explicitly chosen not to play in Canada (NTCs frequently list mainly Canadian teams) just because of higher taxes and tighter regulations, yet ~41% of NHLers are Canadian. Ottawa and Buffalo are far more dysfunctional organizations at the moment, and Utah would be on that list if they hadn't just gotten here.

My point is, it's never about legitimate gripes with Columbus as a destination, any reasons to avoid signing here for that reason exist in other markets in the NHL. There's plenty of good reasons to sign here, as we've seen with JG, Werenski, Jenner, Rick Nash (who's returned to live here and work in the FO), Cam Atkinson (who invested heavily in the community), and countless others. It's always disingenuous people trying to dunk on Ohio for some reason to feel better about themselves when in reality it's a great place to live and great hockey market with plenty to offer. The narrative needs to die because it's disingenuous and always applied in a "f*** you" kind of way.