What do Mitch Marner trade rumors mean for the Penguins?

Excuse the title to co-opting the common refrain about what any hockey news might mean as spun for the self-centered Toronto Maple Leafs, but the questions about Mitch Marner are starting to swirl.

Maybe it’s just the down week and the media needs something to talk about (play the hits!), and nothing draws like palace intrigue in Toronto. Given the connections, possible wishful thinking and possible just making conversation, the stray thought has crossed the internet here and there about what the chances would be for Pittsburgh to get involved.

Given that the Penguins tend to make big swings (and have had success making off-season trades for big name, big money Toronto wingers in the past...), and the whole Kyle Dubas connection, it’s natural enough to see if dots can be connected.

It’s a lost cause and waste of time though. Even though, I guess in early June with nothing going on, that’s not much to talk about.

Pittsburgh was not named in the six potential destinations that might make sense for Marner. There’s also this:

It was reported this week by The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun that Marner’s camp prefers to play out the season in Toronto and not submit any kind of trade list

Marner has a full no movement clause, so any trade is completely up to him. Sometimes NHL players don’t want to be on a team that doesn’t want them (see Patric Hornqvist waiving his no trade clause to leave Pittsburgh) but sometimes players dig in and resist moves to trade them (see Kessel, coming and going from Pittsburgh). It remains unknown where Marner falls on that scale, and how much he might want to stay in an awkward or uncomfortable situation where there’s no long-term future with Toronto, but that will be potentially a fun part about the summer to find out.

The contractual hurdles aside, what also makes Pittsburgh an unlikely landing spot for Marner is the Brendan Shanahan factor. Trade a star player to Kyle Dubas after how their relationship ended? Probably not in the cards, to put it mildly.

Then there’s also the point that Marner carries an $11 million cap hit with only one season remaining, and has always advocated to leverage his biggest pay day possible (which, hey, that’s good for him and smart of him). He’ll need an extension and it will be extremely expensive. The Pens didn’t have appetite to keep or even negotiate much with Jake Guentzel for a market rate deal, it wouldn’t make sense to hitch on for an even longer and bigger contract for Marner with how the Pens are in the very late stage 87/71 era.

So, all in all, could the Pens acquire Mitch Marner? Aside from on Playstation or a fantasy world, the stars almost certainly are not going to align for many, many different reasons, very few of which actually make a lot of sense for the player to agree, the current team to agree and even the Penguins to think such a move would be in-line with the current direction the team is moving with. This time of year in the hockey world we can use something to talk about, but this one fails to line up in just about any realistic regard.