The bigger question (that most Leaf fans choose to ignore) is why would either of Marner or Tavares willingly waive their NMC when they’re playing for the team they dreamed of playing for all their life, all while being paid a disgusting amount of money.
The answer is simple - they wouldn’t.
It's very simple really... nobody wants to be where they aren't wanted.
In the case of Marner, unless he signs something with the Leafs this offseason, he has a HUGE contract riding on his performance this coming year. The last thing he should want to do is jeopardize that by being in a potentially toxic environment.
Furthermore, going all the way to UFA isn't exactly ideal for a player like Marner. Good teams often set their plans for core players well before UFA, and his choice of destination is probably not going to have the $11-$12m in cap space that they'll come July 1.
If the Leafs and Marner cannot come to an agreement on an extension (which seems quite unlikely at this point) it is very much in Marner's best interest to get himself moved to a potential signing destination and/or sign a contract with somebody else.
Even Tavares, nobody's talking about moving him because there seems to be a sense that he probably wants to stay and will embrace a substantially lower cap hit to make that happen.
If that isn't the case, and Tavares says, "Kopitar got $7m at age 36 I want that"... there may be a very frank discussion with Tavares about moving. Obviously, with a young family he does not want to move, but if he's gotta move elsewhere in a year anyways, might as well do it now and get that next contract locked in.
Obviously, with Tavares, you'd certainly need to find a 3rd party to retain 50% on his deal as well,... but like Marner, that's really not all that difficult considering his salary is $910k. At the end of the day, Tavares at $5.5m probably has value in excess of what it would cost for a team to take on a $5.5m cap / $455k retention hit for 1 year.
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