Dubas calls Marchand’s tweet on Marner’s next contract ‘a master troll job’

“Oh man, I think it was a master troll job, to say the least,” Dubas said. “You have to respect that element of it.”

Marner, who had 81 points in 66 games this season heading into Wednesday’s road tilt against the Vancouver Canucks, can become a restricted free agent on July 1 and will be looking for a significant raise.

The 21-year-old is the first member of the Leafs to record 80 points since Phil Kessel in 2013-14, and the eighth player in franchise history to require 66 or fewer games to reach the mark.

Marchand said following Tuesday’s victory over the Carolina Hurricanes that he was just trying to point out Marner’s accomplishments, but Boston’s super pest appeared barely able to contain a smirk as he answered.

“Some people really took that the wrong way,” Marchand said in Boston. “You gotta give the kid credit. He’s a great player, that’s all I was trying to get at.

“Just giving some credit where credit’s due.”

The Bruins beat the Leafs in seven games in the first round of last year’s playoffs, and the Atlantic Division rivals appear on another collision course this spring as the No. 2 and 3 seeds behind the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Apart from helping Boston’s top line combine for 30 points, Marchand was at his antagonizing best in the back-and-forth series, including an infamous lick to the face of Toronto winger Leo Komarov.

“The part that I liked about (the tweet) was there’s over a 90 per cent chance we’re going to play them in the playoffs, if you just take the probabilities of it,” Dubas continued. “He woke up in the morning of a game day and was thinking about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“I thought (that) was a positive thing for us.”

Dubas and the Leafs have already dealt with the contracts of two other potential star RFAs in recent months.

Toronto signed William Nylander to a six-year, US$45-million contract on Dec. 1 to end an impasse that saw him miss the first two months of the season before Auston Matthews reached a five-year, $58.17-million extension on Feb. 5.

Nylander’s AAV is $6.962 million, while Matthews has an AAV of $11.634 million.

Marchand no doubt knows the Leafs could be in a salary cap crunch with Marner’s looming payday, and likely couldn’t help but needle the organization and its fans.

“It’s become a great rivalry,” Dubas said.

The first-year GM added the injury to Jake Gardiner, who is out week to week with a sore back, is not related to the back spasms that kept the defenceman out of two games before January’s all-star break.

Fellow blue-liner Travis Dermott is also on the shelf with a shoulder ailment for at least another three weeks, pressing the likes of Justin Holl, Igor Ozhiganov and Martin Marincin into service.

“It’s unfortunate,” Dubas said. “We need Jake, we’d love to have him and Travis Dermott, but injuries happen during the year. We’re in a division with teams that have had a number of injuries — Boston and Tampa — and they’ve been able to withstand them.”

But Gardiner and Dermott both went down after the NHL’s Feb. 25 trade deadline, meaning the Leafs were unable to plug the potential holes externally.

“If you have injuries, if they’re going to be long-term, you’d like to know that when you can still make different additions to the roster,” Dubas said. “But I don’t know that we would have really been willing to part with anything significant given that these are just week to week.”

GM MEETING WRAP

Unlike years past when hot-button issues like headshots or goalie interference dominated discussion, this year’s GM meetings were mostly about where the game stands.

Players safety — managers want a new rule that would force skaters that lose their helmets to immediately go to the bench or be penalized — and speeding up the pace of play were the main items on the docket.

GMs also mused about changing the first tiebreaker in the standings from the combined tally of regulation and overtime wins to only regulation victories, but the idea didn’t garner enough support.

BETTMAN TALKS SENS

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman spoke to the media at the conclusion of the meetings Wednesday.

And while he echoed most of what was said about the health of the game on the ice, Bettman was inevitably asked about the Ottawa Senators, who have seen their proposed move to a new downtown arena fall apart as owner Eugene Melnyk and his former business partner sue and counter-sue each other.

Consumer confidence in the nation’s capital has dipped drastically since the club got to within a goal of reaching the 2017 Stanley Cup final thanks a string of missteps that have plagued the beleaguered franchise.

The Senators dealt their top-3 scorers — forwards Mark Stone, Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel — before the NHL trade deadline after also shipping captain and star defenceman Erik Karlsson out of town in September.

All four players were unable to agree on new contracts with Ottawa and could have left as unrestricted free agents this summer.

“Teams go through ebbs and flows both on the ice and with their fanbases,” Bettman said. “Eugene Melnyk is doing what’s expected of him as an owner in terms of meeting the team’s obligations. Management, ownership, for any franchise at any given point in time may think it’s time for a rebuild, and that’s what has to be done.

“Teams go through cycles.”

NHL HOSTS SAFETY SUMMIT

The NHL is also hosting a “safety summit” with 15 hockey leagues and organizations, including Hockey Canada and the country’s top junior leagues, Wednesday and Thursday in Florida.

Deputy NHL commissioner Bill Daly said a wide range of topics will be discussed, including injury surveillance, analysis, protective equipment, testing, rules, enforcement, officiating and supplementary discipline.

The league held a similar gathering last year that focused on concussions, but widened the scope to overall player safety in 2019.

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Follow @JClipperton_CP on Twitter

Joshua Clipperton, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Dubas calls Marchand’s tweet on Marner’s next contract ‘a master troll job’

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