Marner holding up major trade!

Mitch Marner inches closer and closer to hitting the free agent market and since neither his agent or the Toronto Maple Leafs are publicly providing any information of substance, we don’t know what will happen with free agency set to open Monday… 

And there is more to do this. The Leafs, who are cap-strapped and looking to shed salary to make room to upgrade on the back end during the offseason, can’t do anything before they solved the Marner situation. 

That’s an actual reported fact as NHL insider Pierre LeBrun revealed on TSN radio on Thursday that rival teams who have been calling the Maple Leafs to make moves in the past weeks have been told that nothing can happen until they Marner is signed. 

The Leafs have been trying to trade out defenseman Nikita Zaitsev for weeks now, but can’t seem to make it work and were even asked to add a sweetener, potentially forward Connor Brown to the mix. 

The trade of veteran Patrick Marleau the Carolina Hurricanes added $6.25 million in salary room for Toronto, but there is still a lot to be done. And it all starts with Marner. 

Clearly, everything is linked back to him…