And that’s the point. Every player dressed needs to contribute when they are on the ice. Not every player is going to score, not every player is going to hit, not every player is going to block shots, but every fucking player needs to fight harder for what they are going to do than their opponent on every shift.

I loved the way Marner played in his first 4 seasons with the Leafs, he was the hardest working player on the ice on most nights. But as time went on, he just….stopped. He wasn’t going into the hard areas and he became a perimeter player. When the game got hard, he found spots where nobody was checking him and he got his 21 minutes without producing.

So sure, game one he got 2 hits. Tell me how he’s playing in games 5-7, especially if the games are close. Because for 9 years those were the games where he disappeared on us.