'I expect they'll be hard on him tonight, and I'm sure he expects they'll be hard on him tonight.' Matt Martin, ex-Leaf and former teammate of John Tavares, weighs in on The Return. (lukefoxjukebox)
Matt MartinThe thoughtful bruiser has just been asked if there might be a little money on the board for this one, the much-hypedMartin, and Leo Komarov, will be skating against their former team Thursday night, too, but the former Leafs’ story barely registers as sidebar-worthy on an eveningfans have had circled on their calendars for 243 days, perhaps in blood. Or spit. Or tears. Or imported snake venom.
Perhaps no one individual can offer quite the balanced perspective of the J.T. "homecoming" that Martin can. Martin knows what it’s like to take a Mitch Marner pass and a Mike Babcock earful, what it’s like to wonder how long the commute to a Brooklyn basketball arena will take him or how long Garth Snow will take to build the kind of winning culture Lou Lamoriello can seemingly establish overnight.
"When he first got here [in 2009], we went through some dark days. There wasn’t a lot of fans in the building. The organization wasn’t in a good place. Then he gets drafted and there’s some hope. A few years, we make the playoffs and things are looking bright."He was the next big thing. He poured his heart out into this organization for nine years. They watched him grow, watched him become a star."Rightfully, people are able to feel upset about that.
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