With Marner's Future in Question, Leafs Could Turn to a Former 40-Goal Scorer as his Replacement

While the focus should be firmly placed on the Toronto Maple Leafs and their current playoff push, it's hard not to think about the upcoming off-season where they have to make difficult decisions when it comes to expiring contracts like Mitch Marner, Matthew Knies, and John Tavares.

Things took an unexpected turn when Marner was asked to waive his NMC for the Carolina Hurricanes in a trade that could have netted the Maple Leafs Mikko Rantanen ahead of the trade deadline.

Now with just a handful of games remaining in the regular season and the club hopeful for a lengthy playoff run, a lot of the focus will shift towards Marner and whether or not he can elevate his game during the post-season.

A lot of teams will be in on Marner should he decide to hit unrestricted free agency. The Carolina's and the New Jersey's have always held interest but there could be new teams in the mix like Chicago and San Jose who could be looking to expedite their rebuilds.

If that is the case and the Leafs lose out on the skilled winger, they could go about finding his replacement in a variety of ways. Florida Panthers forward Sam Bennett would definitely be at the top of their wish-list were he to become available but another low-key name could be Brock Boeser out of Vancouver.

David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period made mention earlier today that his sweepstakes will have many teams fawning over him come July 1st and his future in Vancouver has recently been spotty.

Boeser has scored 203 goals and 430 points in 545 career games across 9 seasons for Vancouver, including a career-best 2023-24 campaign where he tallied 40 goals and 73 points. This year he has 24 goals and 46 points in a bit of a down year but he does have 3 seasons of 25+ goals under his belt.

Replacing Marner is never going to be easy and could be down right impossible but Boeser would more than likely come at half the price, which would allow them to be able to find someone else of the same calibre to fill out their top-6 or even a top-flight defenseman.

It's going to be interesting as we near closer to free agency but until then we shift our focus back on the 2024-25 season and the Maple Leafs current playoff push.