Excuse me but unless you have watched him play for the past two seasons and understand that it is a lot more then one 7 game series that is the issues your comment is not only wrong but misinformed.
He is sat on the bench when we are protecting a lead late in all games and has been since Babs got here. He is not willing to do what it takes to help us win. Take a check to make a play. This is not a 7 game issue but a career issue thus far.
Nylander was more then bad he turned away from pucks, stop skating for fear he would get to pucks first and tuck tail far to many times. This is not a simple bad production series that can happen to anyone but a compete issue.
Marner was just as much as of an issue as Nylander.
You can't use the argument that Babcock 'benched' Nylander during leads late. Babcock is literally known for having bad judgement in stuff like that. If you have Polak out defending leads late in the game, then you know his judgement is wrong.
Sorry but it would mean say good bye to Nylander and the leafs management would not lose any sleep over making a choice over the two of them. Nice try though.
Marner was our best player from mid Jan onwards and if he got 100 pts would be our best player again over a year and a half and you think that a team would trade him away! Not a chance in he double hockey sticks.
So we just ignore his first half of the season like it was irrelvant? No. He wasn't good the first part of the season and that is something that should be used against him.
Their stats are insanely close over the past 2 seasons, while Nylander's zone entries are on a different level than Marners. That being said, Marner didn't play with Matthews.
I find Marner better, but only marginally. As Ian Tulloch and Steve Dangle said on their last podcast, Marner is a lot more flashier and much more memorable than Nylander. Marner would do an insanely nice dangle, and then mess up the rest of the shift and everyone would still love that shift for Marner.