Maple Leafs' biggest mistake of last 10 years revealed

TL;DR

The Toronto Maple Leafs' biggest mistake in the last decade is losing Mitch Marner for nearly nothing, according to a ranking of their worst moves. This revelation comes amid a challenging 2025-26 season for the team.

Key points

Toronto Maple Leafs' biggest mistake is losing Mitch Marner
Ranking of worst mistakes includes 10 significant errors
Scott Maxwell conducted the analysis

Toronto Maple LeafsMitch Marner

Maple Leafs' biggest mistake of last 10 years revealed originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

How did the Toronto Maple Leafs get here?

A nightmare 2025-26 season doesn't come out of nowhere, that's for sure.

Daily Faceoff's Scott Maxwell attempted to get to the bottom of it. To do so, he ranked the Maple Leafs' 10 worst mistakes of the last 10 years.

There's a lot of painful stuff on the list, but the No. 1 spot is one that really shouldn't surprise too many Leafs fans: "Losing Mitch Marner for (almost) nothing."

Marner left Toronto in the summer of 2025 in a sign-and-trade to the Vegas Golden Knights.

The two-way star Marner had made clear he didn't want to stick around. The sign-and-trade got Vegas an extra year on the contract while getting the Leafs a player, Nicolas Roy, in return. Roy was since traded for a first-round pick.

"There was a right way to move on from a piece or two of the core, but leaving it to the point where the decision was up to one of the players and not the team themselves was the worst way," Maxwell writes.

The Maple Leafs tried to use some of the freed up salary to bring in good players, but there was no replacing Marner, even with a combination of players.

Marner had a solid first season in Vegas. It wasn't some exceptional step up, but it did prove he would've still been a great player to have around Toronto.

Instead, Marner is long gone, and the Maple Leafs clearly felt his absence as they scuffled to a miserable season.