Marner Reportedly Closes the Door on a Return to the Maple Leafs

NHL free agency is just a matter of weeks away, and while there's been plenty of speculation surrounding this years free agency class in recent weeks, on Friday we saw a top NHL insider drop a bombshell.

According to reports, Mitch Marner, who has spent the first nine years of his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs has made it known that he will officially be departing the team via free agency.

That report comes from Andy Strickland, and while it's been widely assumed that this would be Marner's move in order to maximize interest and the possible return he gets in free agency, it is now all but official.

To go along with that report, Elliotte Friedman has speculated that if Marner does leave as we now know he will, it's more likely than not that he ends up playing in the Western Conference.

That means the teams like Los Angeles, Vegas, Anaheim and Utah, all of whom have been heavily linked to Marner potentially now become the favourites to land the star forward, especially given reports that a few of those teams are willing to make him one of, if not the single highest paid players in the NHL.

Coming off a career high 102 points, Marner is in prime position to cash in during free agency, and while teams like Carolina and Florida also make sense for the former Maple Leafs star, all we now know for sure is that he's departing Toronto, and from there he could truly end up anywhere.