Marleau is far different. He was offered notably less money ($5M) and term (2Y) by San Jose who had already budged on their initial offer of 1 year, and he was obviously not worth the contract that Toronto gave him. He also handled the entire situation like a professional. San Jose has a knowledgeable and passionate fan base who knows the details of these situations and they make their feelings known accordingly. They wouldn’t boo target and boo Marleau and they sure as hell wouldn’t target and boo their own players while they still play for them. The two situations are not even remotely comparable so we can dead that right now.
Now with regards to Tavares, he led Sharks billionaire Hasso Plattner from Germany to LA to help make a pitch, made sure that the entire LeBron-esque charade was public, every team’s management group was photographed, and the figures of each contract offer were publicly known. Then he took roughly $15M less than San Jose offered him, and turned around and said that he only ever seriously considered Toronto and Long Island.
He used San Jose’s contract offer as leverage to gain a larger contract offer from Toronto. He led them on when he was never seriously interested in them. It’s not much different from a woman who leads on a man in order to get another man jealous.
What Toronto fans need to realize is that people don’t hate Tavares for what he did, or for the fact that he chose Toronto in particular. People hate Tavares because of how he handled the entire situation.
6 years from now, if Auston Matthews reaches UFA and mimics the Tavares situation entirely, ultimately leading on San Jose and signing with Arizona, and posting photos of himself in Coyotes pajamas, I can promise you that Toronto fans will treat him with just as much vitriol. Maybe even more, considering the fact that they’re already willing to boo their own players.
The entire Tavares UFA charade that he orchestrated was the exact opposite of noble.