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Published Aug 29, 2025 • Last updated 13 hours ago • 4 minute read
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Newly acquired Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner speaks with the media at City National Arena on Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in Las Vegas. Photo by Chase Stevens /APArticle content
In separate interviews this week, Mitch Marner and agent Darren Ferris have cited fears for the safety of the former Maple Leaf and his family were partly behind his decision to leave Toronto for Las Vegas.
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Speaking to TSN’s Mark Masters, Marner said he returned home from this past May’s Game 7 elimination loss to the Florida Panthers at Scotiabank Arena and got a message from his father-in-law.
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“He goes, ‘I just want to let you know we’ve got people sending us screenshots of a guy posting your address online,” Marner said. “(The mystery person is) saying ‘if people want to come pay us a visit and say their goodbyes in a quotation way … here’s the address.’”
Marner said there were follow-up threats and he hired full-time security for his home for two weeks. Marner married Stephanie LaChance in July 2023 and welcomed their first child, Miles, in early May during the playoffs.
After elimination, Marner chose not to return in a sign-and-trade deal with the Knights. The general feeling was that the franchise’s fifth-leading scorer and 100-point right winger last season, and the Leafs, too, were looking for a change after years of playoff failure, Marner believing he was getting too much of the blame for a collective letdown by the team’s long-time core.
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Marner said the negativity often spoiled nine years of what had been a dream experience to play for his hometown club.
“The market’s very passionate. They love their team. I know it, I was born and raised there. “But when your family’s safety comes into question … I don’t think it’s acceptable.
“Having full-time security at your house for two weeks after the playoffs, just to make sure no one’s coming around, even worrying about the safety of walking your dog and your child … it’s unfortunate. But, yeah, we all deal with this stuff sometimes.”
Earlier in the week on the 100% Hockey podcast with John Shannon and Daren Millard, Ferris echoed Marner’s concerns and said the post-playoff incident was a tipping point in deciding to talk to the Leafs, versus the eight-year $96 million contract in Vegas.
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“One part people don’t always see is the toll that social media and mainstream coverage can take on a player and their family,” Ferris said. “Mitch went through years of that.
“At the end of every season, instead of being able to breathe and reset, he and the family were bracing for the storm. The negativity, the blame, the hate, it was directed at him and spilled over to people closest to him. There was a dangerous environment, and at times, police had to be involved.”
A couple of years earlier, Marner and LaChance were the victims of an Etobicoke carjacking.
“Mitch showed incredible strength, but at the end of the day, he’s more than a hockey player, he’s a son, a brother and now a new father,” Ferris said. “Protecting that side of him has always been as important as negotiating contracts. When it came time to make a decision about his future, it wasn’t about chasing the last dollar.
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“He had opportunities to make more money elsewhere, but what mattered to him was finding a place where he could focus on playing the game he loves, where his family could feel safe and where he had a real chance to compete for a Stanley Cup. I’d have preferred him to go through the full (free agent) process, sit down with multiple teams and explore every option, the whole dog and pony show. He didn’t want to do it. But we ended up getting a result he was happy with.”
Ferris alluded to other issues that offset the good times for Marner as a Leaf, such as “the (Mike) Babcock fiasco” when the former coach had a young Marner rank teammates efforts and then shared his answers with the entire group.
“It accumulated over the years. There were other things not public I’m not going into. It was constant negativity and misinformation in the public. You can’t blame the fans, they react to what they hear and sometimes it’s misinformation. We couldn’t really go out there and attack every message out there that was incorrect. It just creates a bigger storm.
“The wrong messages were out there on social media, it was attacks on myself personally, you get death threats. You wouldn’t believe the kind of visceral hate there was out there. It was always at the end of the season.”
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Ferris also denied rumours that there was a pre-arranged plan with the Knights earlier in the regular season to secure Marner befoire July 1. A trade with Carolina for Mikko Rantanen was discussed at the NHL March deadline, but Marner used his no-movement clause to squash it, saying he didn’t want to change addresses for what could’ve been a short stint due to his wife’s impending delivery. Ferris described that trade talk as the beginning of the end of Marner’s tenure in Toronto
“He didn’t want to leave. If (his wife wasn’t pregnant), maybe he would’ve done something (the Leafs eventually received Nicolas Roy in a trade with the Knights). At that point he was set on considering Toronto, but just wanted to go through the right approach, trying to help Toronto win while he was there. That was important to him.”
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Ferris said the Vegas pitch when free agency did come around was very compelling, aided by former Knights who assured Marner the team environment and the desert suburbs were a great place to raise a family.
Toronto general manager Brad Treliving has not shed much light on how the negotiations went, but appeared to keep a cordial relationship with the Marner camp throughout the departure.
“I’ve known Brad quite a while, he’s a good man,” Ferris said. “He’s got a tough job. Toronto is not an easy organization to work in with all the noise from the outside, but he seems to weather it. It’s business as usual.”
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