SIMMONS: The mystery of Mitch Marner - the greatest unpopular player in Leafs history
How did it happen that one of the great, uncanny talents in the modern history of Maple Leafs will walk away from the team in a few days time with the circumstances surrounded by difficulty, indifference and disdain?
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We should have loved Mitch Marner, we in the broad sense, the way we once loved Doug Gilmour or Darryl Sittler or Wendel Clark or, long before that, Dave Keon.
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We should have celebrated all that he was and could have been. But the marriage between athlete and community got lost in playoff instability, the relationship between star and its hopeful fanbase tripped all over itself until time ran out and there was no place to go for counselling.
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Toronto adored the best of little Gilmour because of all he gave and because he was never better or bigger than when circumstances required him the most.
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Toronto adored the fight in Clark, the combustion in his game. He would scrap with anyone, hit anyone and score on anyone.
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In Marner there was everything that should have translated to local celebrity, the kind of Leaf who walks around for the rest of his life just being applauded for being a Leaf.
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He was undersized and Toronto always has had a certain hockey affection for the little guy. He was from here, one of us, and we love our own.
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His on-ice vision was near Gretzky-Kucherov-like. His skating has always been exemplary. His side-to-side movement has been almost Crosby-like.
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His scoring numbers — he's the first Leafs winger to score 100 points, the first Leafs winger to average 90 points in his first nine seasons as a Leaf, never once missing the playoffs.
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He has his own charity foundation and seemed happy to give back.
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He was all that and more — so why didn't we embrace him the way we have embraced so many in the past?
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Maybe it was his public persona. He came across as stiff and disingenuous. The more he said in interviews, the more his words would be twisted or over-analyzed.
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He wasn't the debate captain from his school days and maybe someone along the line — an agent, a parent, a media-relations person, a general manager — should have told him that he doesn't come across well.
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That his words didn't translate to the public at a time when social media distorts every syllable spoken. In post-game scrums, which his how the Maple Leafs have chosen to feature their talent to the public, Marner often had the look you might see on one of those movie hostage videos: In other words, get me out of here now.
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