Mitch Marner comments on the hate he received during contract negotiations.

Marner not happy with comments about his family.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Mitch Marner comments on the hate he received during contract negotiations.
Del Mecum/CSM/Zuma

Toronto Maple Leafs star forward Mitch Marner has just signed a contract that comes with life changing money, the kind of money that should ensure the prosperity and well being of his family for generations to come, but in spite of that the process that led him to that deal has been somewhat bittersweet for the talented young National Hockey League stand out. 

Following the signing of his highly anticipated deal Marner sat down with TSN National Hockey League insider Darren Dreger for a one on one interview where he discussed some of the difficulties he had encountered during the process of negotiating his new deal. As a professional athlete it today's modern society Marner admitted that it has become par for the course to be the target of hate online, but it was one particular brand of that hate that seemed to hit closest to home for Marner.

"Social media has its benefits; it's good for certain things, but it's also good for bad things," said Marner as per TSN. "People express their hate for people on that. It's something that a lot of athletes go through on social media is the hate. It was more so just seeing all the stuff being said about my family on social media that made me disappointed and mad. I expected stuff to come at Darren [Ferris] and myself, but I saw a couple of comments about my father that no one is going to like seeing or reading. Pretty disappointed to see some people express themselves about my family and my family name."

The choice made by Marner here to sit down with Darren Dreger of all people here was an interesting one as Dreger himself was caught up in some of those same comments about Marner's family. Paul Marner, Mitch's father, has made himself the target of the ire of Leafs Nation at times, so much so that he deleted his twitter account following public comments regarding the Leafs captaincy and his son, and you would be hard pressed to argue that he has not put himself in the crosshairs. Coincidently TSN's Darren Dreger has often been accused on social media of being a mouthpiece for Marner's agent Darren Ferris and the Marner camp. Whether the accusations have any merit to them or not this has led to fans responding to updates on the Marner negotiations for Dreger with a simple "Thanks Paul," in reference to Mitch Marner's father.

It's easy to see why a proud young man would bristle at any criticism of his father and although I suspect Mitch Marner will get plenty of sympathy from Leafs' Nation, I do not think the same can be said of Paul Marner himself.

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