Apologies for the long post but there's something I've been thinking about re: Marner that I wanted to say.
A long time ago I read an article about some shady deals in Florida between the military and military suppliers or something(I forget exactly what) and one story always stood out in my mind. It was about a woman who basically hosted parties where business people and high ranking military people came and mingled and did deals. Anyways, one such deal was apparently being finalized and this woman spoke to the businessperson doing the deal about how maybe she should get a finders fee of like .1 percent or something. She apparently saw this as pretty reasonable given how she'd introduced the people making the deal.
Problem was, this was a multi-billion dollar deal. So that .1 percent represented millions of dollars. Millions of dollars she was naive enough to think a large company would essentially give her.
Anyways, that story comes to mind because I feel like something we're hearing a lot now about Mitch is that the Leafs have made a competitive offer, a fair offer and the huge gigantic offersheet that was rumoured probably isn't coming in so it's incumbent on Marner to find the middle ground, sign the deal and not sweat a million dollars here or there.
The problem with that idea though is that there's a very good likelihood that Marner isn't sweating any of this. He may very well have communicated to his agent that he wants to be a Leaf, that he wants to sign a deal of a certain length but that his agent is a highly paid professional who is paid to get him the best deal possible and that Marner is pretty content to just let Ferris do his job.
So despite hearing all this "Marner feels disrespected" or "Marner wants to entertain offer sheets" there's every chance that Mitch is out on a fishing boat somewhere fielding occasional calls from his agent but generally speaking not paying too much attention to what's going on.
Because what's the rush? Marner and Dubas both basically know he's the last piece and, given that they signed Johnsson and Kapanen, I bet Dubas probably knows roughly what i'll take to sign Marner and has budgeted appropriately. Now it's just a game of chicken. Dubas might be at 8/9.5 aav and Ferris may be at 8/11.5 or something and now it's just a matter of where they might meet.
And when, too. Marner might be very comfortable waiting at least until deep summer to see if Dubas blinks. And why not? So long as he's confident a deal gets done, this could be taking up next to nothing in mental real estate. His agent is negotiating for him, Marner's enjoying the off-season. The fact that his unsigned status is bugging some people posting on the internet won't matter to him. If the worst thing that happens to him is signing for 8/9.5 aav then that's a pretty worry free life.
So why not just sign now if 9.5 is acceptable to him? Again, that's what his agent does. If you're going to have an agent and pay him a hefty fee, let him do his business.
Will the end result potentially only be a couple of million dollars? Sure but as illustrated in the story above, those millions count. People want them. A big deal sports agent and a company like MLSE aren't going to be nonchalant about that much money if it's there to be made. Don't take it personally, that's just what business negotiations are. All of the talking in the media or rumours or whatever...they very well may be just an aspect of it. Does it play with fans emotions? Yes. It's designed to.
But nobody seriously would expect a big company to just leave a couple millions around, just lk nobody should be shocked by someone like Marner wanting negotiating effectively for it.
