The Boston Bruins are coming off their first non-playoff season since 2016, and they held what amounted to a fire sale at the trade deadline unloading several of their core players. Two of the ex-Bruins will play in the Stanley Cup Final starting this week.
The Bruins are in rebuilding mode and they’re in a good position to pull off a quick return to contention because they have more than $26 million in cap space available thanks to that mid-season fire sale.
Their longtime rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs, are almost certainly losing their star player to free agency. In fact, righty shooting winger Mitch Marner will be the most sought-after free agent on the market, assuming he cuts ties with the Maple Leafs.
Marner’s last contract was a six-year, $65.4 million deal with Toronto, that came with a cap hit just short of $11 million annually. He will naturally be seeking a substantial bump up from that figure. The Bruins with the ninth-most cap space in the NHL are one of the teams than can afford Marner’s services.
But would Marner truly betray Toronto by switching sweaters with the hated Bruins? According to NHL analyst James Mirtle of The Athletic, the 28-year-old who grew up in suburban Toronto may do just that — even though the move would be a “heel turn,” as far as Maple Leafs fans are concerned.
“It was certainly a lost season in Boston this year, but do they try and pull a Capitals and retool quickly? Between David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman, they have a lot of strong pieces in place, so scorched earth doesn’t seem like the way to go,” Mirtle wrote on Monday. “It would be a bit of a heel turn for Marner, given they’re such a big rival in the division, but I don’t think we can rule it out entirely just on that basis. They certainly have the cap room after their big sell-off before the deadline.”
Another Athletic NHL expert, Chris Johnston, also praised Marner in a Tuesday report on top NHL free agents, calling the nine-year veteran “the kind of blue-chip player who rarely hits the open market in his prime. Adding him would be viewed as a franchise-altering move.”
Noting that in addition to his offense — a career-high 102 points in 2024-2025 — Marner is also one of (the NHL’s) more trusted forwards on the defensive side of the puck. …a top penalty-killing option for years and routinely uses his elite instincts to pressure opponents into turnovers when defending at five-on-five.”
The Bruins at just 76.27 percent ranked ninth from the bottom in the NHL in the 2024-2025 season when it came to killing penalties. They could use some help.
“If Marner was interested in joining the Bruins, he’d serve as a much-needed remedy for a Bruins team in desperate need of skill and scoring punch,” wrote Boston.com Bruins correspondent Conor Ryan. “Much as how David Pastrnak was driving his own line alongside Elias Lindholm and Morgan Geekie in 2024-25, a fellow right wing in Mitch Marner could anchor his own top-six line in Boston — even if his supporting cast might be a work in progress on a retooling Bruins roster.”
Ryan noted, however, that Marner is likely to command “one of the heftiest contracts in NHL history” from a team that is not put off by his inability to take Toronto past the second round of the playoffs.
