{"id":629374,"date":"2026-04-26T07:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T07:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629374\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T07:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T07:16:09","slug":"mitch-marner-is-having-another-playoff-nightmare-and-leafs-fans-saw-it-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629374\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitch Marner is having another playoff nightmare \u2014 and Leafs fans saw it coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the Toronto Maple Leafs are stuck picking up the pieces<\/a> of a shattered 2025-26 season, Mitch Marner and the Vegas Golden Knights are playing in the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n

But the Golden Knights look like a shell of their 2023 Stanley Cup-winning selves. <\/p>\n

Vegas is down 2-1 in their series against the upstart Utah Mammoth. The same Utah Mammoth that almost had the same number of points as the Golden Knights in the regular season.<\/p>\n

But Vegas was supposed to be better, much better, after adding one of the best players to hit free agency in the last couple of seasons. Well, Mitch Marner didn\u2019t actually hit free agency, but you know what I mean.<\/p>\n

Marner was supposed to get away from the toxicity of Toronto and emerge as a phoenix in Sin City. He was supposed to prove that the Maple Leafs were the problem and not him. If anything, it was the Leafs that brought him down all those years. The poor goaltending, the lack of support, and the senseless pressure on him to perform were all negative influences on the veteran star.<\/p>\n

Well, it took all of three games to prove that the Maple Leafs weren\u2019t the problem<\/a>. The Golden Knights find themselves down 2-1 in their series against Utah. The Mammoth are making the Knights look like they\u2019re skating on molasses. The young, rising Mammoth have the wheels to compete with anyone. <\/p>\n

They can hang with the best of them. If only they had a great goaltender to steal games for them.<\/p>\n

Even so, the Mammoth have held Marner to just two assists in three games. That\u2019s not what Vegas was hoping for when they signed Marner to that monster contract this offseason.<\/p>\n

The expectation was that Marner could be the game-breaker that the team needed to support Jack Eichel.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t been the case. If the regular season regression in goals and points wasn\u2019t enough of an indication, the current playoff slump should prove that Marner just isn\u2019t a playoff performer.<\/p>\n

Sure, there\u2019s always the possibility that Marner could go insane in the next couple of games and turn the series around for the Golden Knights.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s be honest. Is there any indication that this will be the case?<\/p>\n

As Mark Twain once said, \u201cHistory doesn\u2019t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boy, is history repeating itself in Vegas right now. Leafs fans know what it\u2019s like to see Marner recede into the background during crucial playoff games. Golden Knights fans are finding that out now. And there will be seven more years of rhyming to come.<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the Toronto Maple Leafs are stuck picking up the pieces of a shattered 2025-26 season, Mitch Marner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-629374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}