Mike Rupp predicts Mitch Marner's future with Leafs

Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving has his work cut out for him when it comes to the futures of one half of his team's "Core 4" consisting of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and John Tavares. 

The future of Marner, who enjoyed another successful regular season campaign but was mostly invisible when it mattered most in the postseason, remains up in the air. He has one season left on his current contract with an AAV of $10.903 million. 

According to former NHL forward and current analyst Mike Rupp, the Leafs may be forced to "bite that bullet" and dole out a major new deal to keep him in Toronto if they want to continue their status as a contender. 

"It hasn’t worked for you to have that much money tied up in a few amount of players, right. So it’s this really weird spot where it’s the business side of things that is kind of in the spotlight in that city of Toronto. There’s a ton of pressure. So I don’t know what this means for Mitch Marner. I will say, though, that Mitch Marner holds all the cards," Rupp said on NHL Network.

"So if he wants to sit there and say hey, 'I’m gonna play out.' He’s a Toronto boy if I want to play this thing out, that’s fine. Is he gonna walk for nothing? Like, I can’t imagine that being the conversation come next summer, but I mean, this is a lot on the line here," he added.

"But the biggest thing for the Leafs is they want to take that next step, and Mitch Marner being a part of it, and some of the other moves they’ve made in this offseason if they could feel like hey, we feel like this is our best chance of winning the Stanley Cup. Maybe it bite that bullet. You got to stay tuned. This one’s really appealing.”

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