To my great despair, sometimes you need to recognize a gamer when you see one. As a habs fan, nothing keeps me up at night more than knowing the Leafs are a good team fueled by great players, Mitch Marner being one of them. Despite my deep rooted disdain of the Toronto team, Mitch Marner has been one of the most elite playmaking forwards since he came to the league, and it sucks to have to recognize it. His game is sort of what my game used to be way back when I was still a youngling, and is the type I like the most in the NHL (favorite player growing up, unsurprisingly being Marty St-Louis, so nothing too farfetched).

That being said, in today’s modern hockey, speed, ability and both offensive and defensive acumen are highly sought upon, all of which Mitch possesses and what I aim to model Derek Martin around. My ideal 350 TPE build would include going high on O read, D read, passing, puckhandling and checking, all important attributes in being an elite playmaker. With whatever balance I may find in the build, speed may come to play as an important addition to good positioning and play reading.

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