Mitch Marner has certainly enjoyed his first postseason as a Vegas Golden Knight, and Sunday night’s Game 3 comeback win to take a 3-0 stranglehold on their third-round series against the Colorado Avalanche was just a continuation of that.
The superstar winger played a key role in it, tallying two assists while handling nearly a 24-minute workload, and after the game, Marner was asked how the Golden Knights were able to stay even-keeled despite a poor first period.
“Yeah, we think we obviously have an older group as well that just stays patient and stays calm. We don’t turn on each other, we don’t get mad at each other—we know everyone is trying to do their best out there every single shift. So that was kind of the talk throughout that intermission: just keep doing what we’re doing. We’re doing the right things, we’re getting scoring chances, getting looks. If we keep doing that, we’ll get rewarded eventually,”
TSN analyst Jeff O’Neill believes those comments were a direct shot at the Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander, among others.
“We don’t get mad at each other. I’m a professional at breaking that down—that is a direct shot at the ‘grow up bro, this isn’t junior hockey’ type of stuff on the bench with William Nylander. I would kind of throw shade like that in little subtle ways too if I knew I was probably most likely heading to the Stanley Cup Final. But you know exactly what he’s talking about there—and who knows, maybe he wasn’t—but it sure sounds like these are grown *** men on this team and we don’t do that stupid stuff,”
The 29-year-old Marner is now up to a playoff-leading 21 points (seven goals, 14 assists) through 15 games played so far.
Whether he was directing any of his comments toward his former team is unknown, but Maple Leafs fans are watching closely and wondering where this version of him was during the decade he starred in Toronto.
A nightmare scenario of Marner and the Golden Knights facing the Maple Leafs’ bitter rival Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup Final could soon be on tap, potentially rubbing even more salt into the wound.
Next: Nathan MacKinnon’s Teammates Have His Back Ahead of Must-Win Game 4
