With all the technological advancements hockey has welcomed, from AI to increased data analysis and beyond, you can be forgiven for forgetting that the NHL is still a fundamentally human endeavour. It’s a team sport, but it’s still full of individuals with individual motivations striving to meet their individual goals first, and that extends beyond the players. The assistant equipment manager wants to be the head guy one day, same as the healthy scratch wants a crack at the first line.

It’s with that in mind that I wanted to talk about the Mitchell Marner quagmire, which has been so heavily covered over the past few weeks. We all know who the major players are in the direction-altering decision the Leafs face here, and the individual motivations of those people are going to determine how this plays out. Yes, it’s Marner himself, but it’s also Brendan Shanahan, Brad Treliving, and now Craig Berube and Keith Pelley, too. We’ll keep it focused on those names, even though there’s obviously more, such as Marner’s agent, Darren Ferris, and the cottage industry of locals around the player.

So, let’s evaluate what the motivations of the five main names above might be, and at the end, take some guesses about what it all means for how this will shake out.

First up, the most important name of the bunch, the man himself, Mitch Marner.

What would Mitch Marner want?

The best case scenario for Marner is, unequivocally, that he stays in Toronto and wins a Stanley Cup as the hometown hero who persevered through the hard times when everybody said he couldn’t do it.

By staying and chasing that goal, any outcome would suit him beautifully. He either succeeds and is a lifelong legend in Toronto (and gets paid to stay), or he fails and is walked right to UFA, where he’d handpick a new team in the prime of his career while getting a massive contract.

The only way it would make sense to do anything other than chase this scenario is if he gets to go exactly where he would’ve chosen anyway immediately, in a trade and with the extension he wants. That way he wouldn’t have to endure a hellish year under the microscope in Toronto and get his “vindication tour” started a skosh earlier.

But hard as it might be, make no mistake: the motto in Team Marner’s head is “stay and play and go UFA.”

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What would Brendan Shanahan want?

Keeping Marner puts the crosshairs squarely on Shanahan, which he can’t like, but it’s kind of there anyway. He’s taken heat for being the man behind several previous iterations of the “run it back” plan, as he’s been outward in his belief in the Leafs’ talent eventually breaking through. He was the one who immediately called the core to let them know all was well post-breakup with Kyle Dubas after their 2023 playoff loss. He’s built around that core, and he’s been their protector.

Most people thought this summer could’ve been it for Shanahan (some might say it should have been), but him sticking around makes sense for new boss Keith Pelley.

But one more “run it back” with Marner, and that would likely be the end of Shanahan. A Marner trade might at least open up the possibility for a new plan, which might buy Shanahan more time to see it through.

But all that said: Shanahan’s ultimate vindication is the same as Marner’s, and that matters here. If he keeps Marner, and some iteration of the Leafs succeeds, Shanahan will be a forever hero for his show of determined patience.

What would Brad Treliving want?

Brad Treliving knows how important stars are, knows how hard they are to acquire, and had to deal with the mess of trading Matthew Tkachuk out of Calgary. He traded a prime-aged star and it didn’t work out great because it’s almost impossible for it to end any other way, and here he is faced with a similar situation.

If Treliving trades Marner, it will move the crosshairs from others on to his own profile. The move will get dissected, it will get publicly crucified because the average fan wouldn’t understand the value of cap space or the complications of Marner’s short contract term, or the leverage the player and the other team would have with the no-move clause.

Treliving’s been here for just one year and Marner was one of the reasons the Leafs fell a goal short in the 2024 playoffs, but not the only one. You could excuse Treliving for thinking he’d prefer to keep the prime-aged, near 100-point player and recent Selke finalist and try to make the rest of the team one per cent better rather than to further tie his own legacy to forced star trades that end up looking lopsided against him.

On the other hand, I would imagine walking a superstar to UFA and losing him wouldn’t appeal a ton either, so Treliving’s probably conflicted. What’s available in return really will matter.

What would Craig Berube want?

As a coach, all you want are tools. You can’t win if you don’t have the talent, so you’d rather have it and figure out how to deploy it than to go into battle without any weapons of significance. Make no mistake, Marner can be a weapon, the gun has just jammed in the playoffs.

All Berube would want is the best players he could possibly get, so if you told him you could do better than Marner, he’d support it in a heartbeat. But you almost certainly can’t — unless maybe Juuse Saros is that for you- and so I’m willing to bet Berube would rather hang on to the player.

It would also give him the chance to be the goat whisperer (old-fashioned negative connotation of “goat” here), where he comes in and gets Marner to find his game in the biggest moments and it helps them over the hump.

And finally…

What would Keith Pelley want?

The simplest answer is that he likely doesn’t care what they do with the players so long as they win. They could trade Marner to the moon or play him 60 minutes a night, Pelley would just want the Leafs to win.

But only one team out of 32 wins it all, and I’m guessing Pelley doesn’t want the Leafs to be a sideshow on their way to the next playoff attempt. And if the reputation has been for their stars to soak up all the cap space and not lead the team to many second round playoff gates, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be thrilled about the prospect of extending one of those players for eight more years. Losing Marner for nothing to UFA wouldn’t sound like great business either. So Pelley may have some reason to feel a trade makes sense, unlike just about everyone else.

So what does all this mean?

If you’ve been listening to Canada’s hockey insiders the past couple days, it’s clear Camp Marner has started to spread the word of what they’d like to see happen: he wants to “Stay and play to go UFA,” and so they’re now floating those trial balloons to the public through myriad channels to get people to warm up to the idea.

And I can’t shake the reality in the words above that one vision lines up cleanly with the interests of most parties involved. That’s the version of this story where Marner’s best case scenario is to stay with the Leafs and have great team success next season. In that scenario Pelley would get what he wants, Shanahan would be vindicated, Berube would look like a hero, and maybe they’d even extend and keep a player in Marner who fans suddenly say “Oh, he can produce in the playoffs, yes let’s keep this guy I can’t believe we almost traded him.”

Too many of the principal individuals win in that fantasy for them not to consider pursuing it.

To me, those questions about individual motivations are what’s going to matter this summer more than just “What’s the best thing for the team next season and beyond?” As I started off with in this column, NHL hockey is a team game full of individuals with individual motivations.

I’m not sure “Keep Marner” is the answer to the question of “What’s best” for the Leafs and their fans. But it just may be what’s best for those people who have to make the decision, which should point us to what the eventual outcome might be.