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If only those things had gone differently, Marner would probably still be a Leaf. Heck, he’d still be on track to be an all-time Leafs legend.

Alas, those things did not go differently. And there will be no more chances to rewrite the narrative — at least not any time soon.

On Monday, the Leafs bid adieu to the Core Four era by signing Marner to an eight-year deal worth $96 million (U.S.) and promptly obeying Marner’s wish to be traded to the Vegas Golden Knights in exchange for bottom-six forward Nicolas Roy.

With NHL free agency beginning Tuesday, É«É«À² general manager Brad Treliving’s self-prescribed need for a DNA change is so far built on addition by subtraction — and not necessarily by the club’s choice. The Leafs had been open to re-signing Marner this past season. Marner, whose camp rarely failed to point out the downside of life as a Leaf, was finally keen for a change of scenery.

So goes the difference between winning franchises and losing ones. While the Leafs now scramble to replace Marner’s clockwork regular-season production, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers spent Monday celebrating the re-signing of a couple of championship linchpins. Days after re-upping Conn Smythe Trophy winner Sam Bennett, the Panthers re-signed Aaron Ekblad to an eight-year deal with an annual average value of about $6.1 million. Potential É«É«À² target Brad Marchand, meanwhile, agreed to stay in Florida on a six-year deal with an AAV of about $5.25 million.

There’ll be those in É«É«À² who say good riddance to Marner, which is understandable. The Core Four’s rare combination of chronic playoff failure and gold-plated contracts seeded exasperated resentment for years.

But make no mistake, Monday saw a É«É«À² era that began with unprecedented hope end in a debacle of managerial haplessness. The real malpractice wasn’t Treliving’s, mind you; it happened years ago. Blame former GM Kyle Dubas for playing softball while his best players competed harder at the negotiating table than they ever did in the playoff crucible.

And go back to the off-season of 2023, before Marner’s full trade protection kicked. In the wake of Dubas’s inelegant departure as GM, team president Brendan Shanahan made the inexplicable decision to stick with the status quo no matter the obvious need to change the mix. If there was a last-ditch moment to fetch a better return for Marner without his sign-off, it came and went then.

Who else is to blame for watching one of the top talents in franchise history leave for nearly nothing? Former head coach Mike Babcock did his part to build the Marner camp narrative that he had been mistreated in É«É«À². Still, it was Shanahan who presided over that mess, and many others.

If only it had been different. If only Marner would have stayed around and kept doing what he’d done on the ice, he would have spent this coming season passing Börje Salming for sole possession of fourth place on the franchise points list. Only Dave Keon, Darryl Sittler and Mats Sundin would have been ahead of him after that. Since Marner joined the Leafs, no other player has scored as many points in the regular season — not even Auston Matthews.

And for all the justified talk of playoff underperformance, no other Leaf has scored as many points in the post-season since 2016-17 — not even Matthews. Marner, of course, put up less-than-impressive numbers in Games 5 through 7 in many a playoff series. Maybe his slight frame was never suited to the rigours of crunch-time hockey, in which case the Golden Knights just made a major miscalculation. Maybe the pressure of the É«É«À² market was too much, in which case the relative quiet of the Nevada desert could be a game changer.

Maybe Marner’s problem was even more fundamental. From the beginning, there was a feeling that he wasn’t being treated with sufficient respect in É«É«À². Even on his entry-level deal, Marner’s camp made it known they were unhappy with the fact that Matthews received so-called Schedule B bonuses, while Marner was told those bonuses weren’t available under Lou Lamoriello’s hallowed rule. There was similar noise made around Marner’s always contentious contract talks, and around Marner never being considered for the role of team captain.

As it is, one of the great if onlys in Leafs history has produced an impending certainty: The local kid who came close to charting a path to É«É«À² immortality has engineered the starkest heel turn since Vince Carter quit on the Raptors. The improbable road to Sin City has transformed a would-be Leafs hero into a É«É«À² sporting enemy. Perhaps only in Leafland is it possible for such a promising beginning to end so grimly.