Some NHLers embrace getting booed. Can Marner do it in Toronto?

Since the dawn of professional sports, athletes have been claiming they don't hear it when they get booed. Marcus Foligno is calling their bluff.

"Everyone says, 'Oh, I don't hear it,' but you do hear the boos," the Minnesota Wild forward told theScore. He says he's been booed multiple times throughout his 15-year NHL career. "Especially the big ones when you get traded and (fans) get salty about the way you leave the organization."

Mitch Marner is going to get one of the big ones.

He lived out the dream of every sports fan and became a star player for his hometown team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. If things had gone according to plan, he would've been remembered forever as a legend.

Instead, Marner could be in for one of the most hostile receptions a returning player has received in the history of both Toronto sports and the NHL. While Scotiabank Arena isn't typically known as a loud or intimidating environment, it should be buzzing Friday when Marner makes his first appearance there as a visiting player with the Vegas Golden Knights.

That was to be expected after he left this past offseason in a sign-and-trade despite receiving extension offers from Toronto. But the fact that Marner was booed in his home rink by the smattering of Maple Leafs fans in attendance for their game in Las Vegas on Jan. 15 cemented his fate in Friday's contest.

"I think the great question was always what my expectations were (for Jan. 23), but now I think I know going in," Marner told reporters postgame.

As five-time World Series champion Reggie Jackson famously said, "They don't boo nobodies."

"That's reserved for special players and a compliment more than anything," Maple Leafs defenseman Jake McCabe said.

McCabe said he's never been singled out individually, but when he played for the Sabres, the team "got booed off the ice all the time in Buffalo." He admitted it did not feel good.

Foligno said he received a positive reception when he returned to Buffalo to face the Sabres - his only former team - as a visiting player for the first time after he was traded to Minnesota in 2017. But in rival Winnipeg, he's become a villain.

Foligno has fought Jets captain Adam Lowry three times, most recently in November 2025. They fought each other twice in the same game in February 2022. Foligno was handed the only suspension of his career - a two-game ban - for kneeing Lowry during the second tilt of the contest.

"The way I play, physically, there's been some times where fans don't take a liking to the physical play you bring," Foligno said. "There's been some run-ins with Winnipeg, there's been some boos when you get shown on the Jumbotron. It's fun. It brings you into the game a little bit more."

Some players are comfortable playing the villain role, including Marner's former teammate Max Domi.

Domi said he was booed "almost every game" while playing junior hockey with the London Knights and got the same reaction when he returned to face his former teams for the first time in Columbus and Montreal. He said he "could care less" about the reception he gets in his old stomping grounds.

"It's unreal," the Maple Leafs forward said with a smirk. "They won't boo you for nothing."

Unlike Foligno and Domi, Marner doesn't seem to be the type of player who feeds off that energy. Not known for being physical in general, he's never fought in his 10-year NHL career. He doesn't seem likely to just brush it off, either. As gifted as he is, he didn't deliver when the lights were brightest in Toronto. He appeared to grip his stick tighter as the pressure mounted. It's a major reason why he's playing for another team now.

It would only be human if the jeers affected Marner on a personal level. Remember, he grew up less than an hour away from Scotiabank Arena in the neighborhood of Thornhill. Getting booed by the very same fans who once cheered him on after an unceremonious playoff exit is a nightmare.

The Maple Leafs won just two playoff rounds with Marner despite making the postseason in each of the last nine years. While the rest of the Core Four - Auston Matthews, John Tavares, and William Nylander - also deserve varying degrees of blame for the playoff failures, it's Marner who was often scapegoated.

He scored 13 goals in 70 playoff games with the Maple Leafs. Toronto went 0-7 in winner-take-all games with Marner, who produced zero goals and two assists in those legacy-defining contests.

However, his relationship with the Maple Leafs fan base began to sour long before his departure. The foundation cracked in 2019 during a drawn-out, contentious contract negotiation. Marner squeezed his hometown team for every penny, signing a six-year deal with an average annual value of almost $10.9 million that made him the league's seventh highest-paid player for the coming season. Refusing to bend on anything in that negotiation - term or money - rubbed fans the wrong way, especially when other NHL players were regularly making concessions that gave their franchises more team-building flexibility.

Of course, all of that would have been forgiven if Marner had delivered in the playoffs. That never happened. He alienated fans further during 2023's second-round matchup against the Florida Panthers. With the team down 3-0 in the series, he dismissed external criticism of the team, insisting: "We don't care what you guys say." The Leafs lost in five games.

Then there was his temper tantrum on the bench during the 2024 playoffs.

In 2025, sporting a dry head of hair 35 minutes into a second-round Game 7, he screamed at his teammates to wake up. The Leafs were trailing the Panthers 3-0 and went on to lose 6-1 (coincidentally, Domi scored their only goal).

Neither of those on-ice outbursts helped his cause.

Marner also refused to waive his no-movement clause for a potential 2025 deadline deal that would've brought Mikko Rantanen to Toronto. He shouldn't be booed for that - he was well within his rights to do so, especially with a pregnant wife.

But Maple Leafs fans, who pay enormous amounts of money for tickets, are well within their rights to let him hear it Friday for just about everything else.

"When you're booed, you automatically think that they hate you," Foligno said. "But ... they're trying to get you off your game more than anything. You gotta think of it that way."

Marner might try to think of it that way. But deep down, he'll know there's more to it.