Mitch Marner: what now?

[princedpw]

While I wouldn?t use the adjective ?spoiled? to characterize (what little we know about) Marner?s actions and I?d likely negotiate similarly myself, I do understand a leafs? fan desire to see Marner sign for a smaller dollar amount.

... I can see we are now firmly in the no-news doldrums of the summer ...

 

[Bender]

While I wouldn?t use the adjective ?spoiled? to characterize (what little we know about) Marner?s actions and I?d likely negotiate similarly myself, I do understand a leafs? fan desire to see Marner sign for a smaller dollar amount.

... I can see we are now firmly in the no-news doldrums of the summer ...

It's a shitty byproduct of the hard cap system that we turn on players who we think need to fit a certain range of payment in terms of cap dollars.

 

[herman]

Fans turned on players before the cap too, pretty much based on whatever narrative the media was spinning at the time.

 

[Bullfrog]

I hesitate to keep talking about this because it's so tragically stupid but isn't the idea behind someone being spoiled that they've been given everything without earning it so they don't appreciate things?

If so, what has Marner been given? For three years he's produced like a first liner and been paid like a 4th line scrub because of the league's rookie wage scale. Even if you want to think that Marner not having signed yet reveals something negative about his character, and again that notion is worthy of ridicule, the idea that he's "spoiled" doesn't fit in the least.

+ being screwed over on performance bonuses. Matthews grossed a couple million more, I believe, because of the differences in their contracts.

 

[Bullfrog]

What I've learned from this thread: People seem to know little about how income taxes for millionaires works.

 

[Bender]

Fans turned on players before the cap too, pretty much based on whatever narrative the media was spinning at the time.

I'd rather turn on a player for sub-par play and maybe having a bloated contract a la Zaitsev or Komisarek than due to the machinations of the cap via RFA superstars.

 

[Zee]

I hesitate to keep talking about this because it's so tragically stupid but isn't the idea behind someone being spoiled that they've been given everything without earning it so they don't appreciate things?

If so, what has Marner been given? For three years he's produced like a first liner and been paid like a 4th line scrub because of the league's rookie wage scale. Even if you want to think that Marner not having signed yet reveals something negative about his character, and again that notion is worthy of ridicule, the idea that he's "spoiled" doesn't fit in the least.

+ being screwed over on performance bonuses. Matthews grossed a couple million more, I believe, because of the differences in their contracts.

Leafs could easily "give back" those couple of million more he would have earned by upping the total over a 6 year term. If they were ok to give him $9.5M x 6 years, up that to $10M x 6 to give him an extra $3M total to make up for the Louless bonus money.

 

[Chris]

I hesitate to keep talking about this because it's so tragically stupid but isn't the idea behind someone being spoiled that they've been given everything without earning it so they don't appreciate things?

If so, what has Marner been given? For three years he's produced like a first liner and been paid like a 4th line scrub because of the league's rookie wage scale. Even if you want to think that Marner not having signed yet reveals something negative about his character, and again that notion is worthy of ridicule, the idea that he's "spoiled" doesn't fit in the least.

Poor guy has only earned about $2.7 mil (from capfriendly) in his first 3 years. That's more than a lot of people make in their whole working life.

No matter what contract he signs, he's going to have more money than he'll know what to do with (unless he's incredibly stupid).

 

[Bullfrog]

Poor guy has only earned about $2.7 mil (from capfriendly) in his first 3 years. That's more than a lot of people make in their whole working life.

No matter what contract he signs, he's going to have more money than he'll know what to do with (unless he's incredibly stupid).

While this is all true, what is your point on this matter? That he should just be happy with whatever he's offered?

 

[4EVRLEAFAN]

Poor guy has only earned about $2.7 mil (from capfriendly) in his first 3 years. That's more than a lot of people make in their whole working life.

No matter what contract he signs, he's going to have more money than he'll know what to do with (unless he's incredibly stupid).

While this is all true, what is your point on this matter? That he should just be happy with whatever he's offered?

Of course not, but as I said in my peply, he was probably offered something around 70 mill and turned it down and he didn't only make 2.7 mill he's already signed some serious endorsements and more will come, he's already a multi millionaire, so at what point do fans finally say enough?

 

[Bullfrog]

What does that mean "at what point do fans finally say enough"? Enough of what? And what are we saying? and to whom?

 

[CarltonTheBear]

What does that mean "at what point do fans finally say enough"? Enough of what? And what are we saying? and to whom?

Stop using Intact Insurance!

 

[Kin]

Poor guy has only earned about $2.7 mil (from capfriendly) in his first 3 years. That's more than a lot of people make in their whole working life.

No matter what contract he signs, he's going to have more money than he'll know what to do with (unless he's incredibly stupid).

And all of that money was earned through hard work and talent. He wasn't given anything.

He's negotiating for fair % of the revenue his talent is generating. If you're mad that every dollar he gets is a dollar the team can't spend on someone else, get mad at the league and team for forcing that on us via the cap.

 

[L K]

Poor guy has only earned about $2.7 mil (from capfriendly) in his first 3 years. That's more than a lot of people make in their whole working life.

No matter what contract he signs, he's going to have more money than he'll know what to do with (unless he's incredibly stupid).

And all of that money was earned through hard work and talent. He wasn't given anything.

He's negotiating for fair % of the revenue his talent is generating. If you're mad that every dollar he gets is a dollar the team can't spend on someone else, get mad at the league and team for forcing that on us via the cap.

I really have never understood the "that's more money than I make so therefore he should be grateful and just accept less" argument. 

He's not working in your industry. He's not competing for a job against a Starbucks barista or most lawyers or doctors etc. 

If you went to your job tomorrow and everyone else was making 5 million and you were making 1, you would be pissed off.

 

[Kin]

If you went to your job tomorrow and everyone else was making 5 million and you were making 1, you would be pissed off.

Exactly. I don't think it's a stretch to say that when you look at our society, a pretty common theme is that nobody wants to be paid less than they're worth no matter how much money they have. Marner is one of the 40 or 50 best people in the world at what he does(at least). In just about any industry, if you're that good there's going to be a lot of money involved. Being an athlete is probably one of the few where you're limited in what you can make and what sort of deal you can negotiate for yourself and still fans whine about it.

It takes a really special kind of person to look at a situation where an agent of Mitch Marner is negotiating with an agent of Larry Tanenbaum and Rogers and Bell Media and say "Man, that Mitch Marner sure is greedy".

 

[Frank E]

One of the things that has fans reacting this way is that for every dollar they give Marner, the team loses a dollar they could spend elsewhere...this makes the fans want Marner to take less so that they can keep adding nice assets to the team...because of this, fans are actually the selfish ones, not the players, when they want Marner to take a Stamkos deal.

I don't think it's that fans want Marner to acquiesce to Tanenbaum, it's that they want the extra dollars to improve the team.

It's still not a reasonable expectation to put that on Marner, or whoever is negotiating a deal, but I get where it comes from...fans are selfish.

 

[Bullfrog]

Marner is one of the 40 or 50 best people in the world at what he does(at least). In just about any industry, if you're that good there's going to be a lot of money involved.

Being a commie socialist, I find the amount of money these people (the tops in their fields) make is ridiculous. But nonetheless, I think this is a fact most people seem to be forgetting. Most owners of hockey teams are BILLIONAIRES. What's Marner's take-home on a $9M US contract? $6M CDN? -agent's cut; insurance, etc. Still a tonne of money for us; still a minuscule amount of money compared to the owners and top players in soccer leagues, NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.

If you're right and he's a top 40-50 player, that means he's better than around 700+ players that will play in the NHL alone this season. Forget about all the other professional leagues, including AHL, SM Liiga, KHL, etc. I think sometimes as fans we forget or trivialize just how elite these players are. We talk about "bad" NHL players, who are really still one of the best 2000 or so pro hockey athletes in the world. In a world with 7.5 billion people, that's not too shabby!

 

[TML fan]

Marner would be considered "Labour" in most industries. Most industries have a standard wage for labourers. There might be some variation in compensation from company to company but you're always going to making around the same regardless of where you work. There also isn't much room to negotiate compensation individually, particularly in a unionized environment and generally the worst employee makes the same as the best employee. You have to get into management levels before you start seeing individuals being able to command more money in most industries.

In a typical industry, Marner would be compensated what a 4th year employee would be compensated and how good he is would be entirely irrelevant.

It's easy to see why a common fan can't relate to Marner's position.

 

[Kin]

I don't think it's that fans want Marner to acquiesce to Tanenbaum, it's that they want the extra dollars to improve the team.

As Herman said earlier, it's not like fans criticizing players for wanting to negotiate the best deal for themselves started with the cap. Fans so universally resenting players earning the money they do, and siding with the owners during the lockouts, is one of the primary reasons we have the cap in the first place. So, no, I don't think this is even as rational as somehow expecting the players to see the cap as a moral issue.

Honestly, if you look to the past and look at things like the formation of the NHLPA or the Koufax-Drysdale holdout or even the Curt Flood Supreme Court case fans were complaining about players salaries when players had virtually no rights whatsoever.

 

[Zee]

If the Leafs were at the cap floor and crying poverty in not being able to sign Marner, then as a fan I would cry foul and say the billionaires aren't putting forth the best effort to put a good team on the ice.  The Leafs have left themselves anywhere between 9.5-10.5 to fit Marner in comfortably without having to subtract any more players from the roster - a number which I think is very fair in terms of compensation for Marner.  At a cap hit of $9.5M he'd be among the top 20 cap hits in the NHL, at $10M he'd be tied for top 10 in the league.  It's not like Marner is getting lowballed here, the Leafs have to compete against the rest of the league where other teams have similar talent signed to reasonable numbers.  That's just a reality of the NHL and the salary cap.