The biggest name available in 2025 NHL Free Agency came off the board before the market opened on Tuesday. Superstar winger Mitch Marner was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights, where he subsequently signed an eight-year contract. Marner’s former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, acquired forward Nicolas Roy in the deal.
Marner gives the Golden Knights one of the best 1-2 punches in the league. The newest Knight pairs with center Jack Eichel on the top line in the Sin City. Marner is coming off a 100-point season for the Maple Leafs, while Eichel is playing the best hockey of his career.
Moving to Vegas is about more than joining good players. That’s certainly part of it, but there are good players all across the league. What matters is whether these players win. Vegas has done nothing but win in its short history, and that’s the main reason Marner decided to join the Golden Knights.
“Obviously the winning regimen they’ve put up through the past five years, really since they’ve been in the League,” Marner said, via NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger. “They’ve got such a competitive team every year. They’ve got some good players here.”
Mitch Marner Was Priority No. 1 For Golden Knights
Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesMitch Marner joins the Vegas Golden Knights after spending his entire career with the Toronto Maple Leafs to this point.
If there’s any team in the NHL who could say they didn’t need a player like Marner, the Golden Knights are one of them. Vegas has found success without a 100-point presence in the lineup. In fact, they’ve had just one player score more than 80 points in a single season over the course of their franchise’s history.
However, players like Marner don’t grow on trees. The Golden Knights could have continued as they were. In the end, they identified that adding a talent like this would benefit them more than their status quo. It did not matter how their season ended. They would have done everything to convince Marner to sign on the dotted line.
“We would have pursued Mitch Marner [even] if we’d won the Stanley Cup,” Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said, via Zeisberger. “He’s a world-class talent.”
Marner Discusses Decision to Leave Maple Leafs
Marner leaving Toronto was certainly not an easy decision. The superstar forward is a native of the city. And he went through a lot while with the team. However, once the season ended, he felt it was best for him to seek a new place to play.
“I was so grateful to play there for nine years. I said at my end-of-the-year interview there that they took a risky chance on a small kid from Toronto that is forever grateful to have worn that Maple Leafs jersey. But now, being a family man, a father, we thought it was time to look somewhere else and find a new home and find a new place to grow our family,” the Golden Knights star said, via Zeisberger.
Marner has a chance to shine on his own in Vegas. He joins a team itching to win another Stanley Cup. And the Golden Knights hope he is the catalyst for another championship in the Sin City.
Mitch Marner Explains Why he Chose Golden Knights