Ask him what markets he would accept a trade to. If he tries to be a dipshit about it and refuse to leave, I don't see how you can do anything but let him walk at the end of the year. We're past the point where there's any "potential" left there, he is what he is. He's a really good point producer and a top 5-10 RW in the league but he probably wants to be paid like a top 5 player in the league again. If you give him the money he wants (12.5+ or whatever he wants) you're placing a bet on him being the type of guy you can have in a winning core and I just don't think he is. This isn't the Kessel situation where Phil was alone on an island being blamed for the team going nowhere while Tyler Bozak fed him pucks on the 1st line. He's been fucking blessed with elite talent around him since the day he arrived in the league. We're already locked into the Cock and Willy, take the 22 million in cap space and don't fuck it up.
Dammit, I never entertained the idea of trading him, and I'm still not, but this is the first time the thought is creeping into my head that the core needs a shake up, that he's the logical candidate to go based on both money and performance and lack of contract, but...
1) We for sure will get burned by him going and winning elsewhere. No question about it.
2) He will get 100 points a year wherever he goes.
3) I don't know who the fuck you replace him with since it's never easy just nabbing an equivalent superstar for just money as a UFA- and not just equivalent but better, and someone who "has what it takes to win".
4) As soon as he's gone, we're going to be complaining that we have no one to feed Matthews, and will be searching till the end of his career for a Marner-type who "has what it takes to win".
5) The cancer might be Matthews or Nylander, and we won't know until after Marner's gone.
All of which again pulls me back to saying fuck it and just play it out to the end with this core. Either they figure it out or they don't. But what aggravates the fuck out of me is that we have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, iced the best roster around these guys. Not that we didn't assemble it, but that we refuse to play the best players, and dump or bury the worst ones. There is always a Simmonds, or Reaves, or ZAR, or Kampf, or Baboon, or Edmonkey, or whoever, you name it, who fucking stinks, and who is our KEY role player or defensive depth. We never actually know what our best iced team looks like for more than a game or two in a season.
We also had one failed flameout former fatboy player as our last coach, losers before him, and now a career goon in a suit after him. Just fucking terrible. We got the most in demand psycho coach in Babcock, won the lottery with our draft picks, and looked a year or two away from a cup, and somehow the whole thing went straight to shit and we've got one playoff round over eight fucking years to show for it, and this utter shitshow of the last couple of games to get us to think about what punishment we're in store for next.