LAS VEGAS — There they stood along the glass during warmups for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, two Thornhill lifers in full Mitch Marner Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys amid a sea of Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes colours. One held a simple, handwritten sign high above his head: “My Therapist Recommended This Trip.” The other had flipped his jersey backwards so that Marner’s name and number faced forward across his chest, the familiar blue-and-white crest now pressed against his back.
David Krowitz and Al Sager flew across the continent not for the spectacle alone, but because they needed to be here. had season tickets in the family since 1968. Between them they had attended more than 500 Leafs games. They had lived through every era of hope and heartbreak, and when the core they believed in most, Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares, failed to deliver a Cup, they understood the pain in a way only true believers can.
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So when the playoff bracket opened a door to Vegas, they walked through it.
The decision was made in the middle of the night. After Carolina eliminated the Montreal Canadiens, Krowitz and Sager were texting at midnight, both sitting in bed next to their wives. “Dude, you want to do this?” one asked. “Yeah, let’s do this,” came the reply. Their wives, Lily for Krowitz and Mel for Sager, didn’t push back. Lily’s only instruction was simple: “Don’t worry, go. You’ll have the best time ever.”
It was Krowitz’s anniversary weekend. The fact that both women said yes without hesitation became its own story.
“Every wife should be this good,” Krowitz told the The Hockey News in a telephone call from the road on Sunday afternoon.
They booked the trip on Tuesday, flew out Thursday, spent two days taking in Vegas, and then settled in for Game 3. The plan after the game was to drive to Phoenix to visit a friend before flying home, a route that would take them through the mountains and, coincidentally, through the same phone call that would become this story.
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By the time the puck dropped, the two friends had already become minor celebrities in the concourse. People stopped them constantly. Some rubbed the backwards Marner jersey for good luck. Others did double-takes.
One man asked Krowitz, “Hey man, are you lost?” Toronto fans walking by scratched their heads until Al turned around and showed them the name on his chest. Then the lightbulb went on.Mi
David Krowitz outside T-Mobile Arena, courtesy David Krowitz
The backwards jersey wasn’t a gimmick. It was deliberate.
“It wasn’t about the Leafs of Marner’s,” Sager explained. “I wanted to wear his team on the front, not the Leafs on the front.”
They wanted Marner’s identity front and center, the franchise that Marner parted ways with, not the crest that had defined a decade of their own lives. Just the player.
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Inside T-Mobile Arena, the night unfolded exactly as the two friends had somehow sensed it would. Earlier that afternoon, around 1 p.m., Al had called a 5-4 double-overtime win for Vegas. The only detail they got wrong was who would score the winner. They thought it would be Marner. Instead, he delivered a hat trick and played the most dominant game of his postseason.
The Golden Knights won 5-4 in double overtime. The playoff towels handed out that night all carried Marner’s face. Krowitz and Sager each kept one.
“It was very fitting that the playoff towels were all Marner,” Krowitz said. “We had Marner’s face on the playoff towels. It was just fitting that we were there on that night for a double-overtime win in Vegas. And record-setting points, hat trick — Marner performs the best he’s ever performed. It was a very quintessential of the way everything worked out.”
They had predicted the score. They had predicted the drama. They had not predicted how perfectly the night would align with the reason they came.
Krowitz and Sager were still buzzing. They had been lined up to appear on Hockey Night in Canada during the third period of Game 3, but the broadcast pivoted when Carolina mounted its furious comeback to erase a four-goal lead. The on-ice story took precedence. No one complained. That was hockey.
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What they did want to make clear, repeatedly, was that their presence in Vegas did not mean they had abandoned the Toronto Maple Leafs.
They remain diehard Leafs fans. They remain Marner fans. The two things are not in conflict for them. What they saw in Vegas only reinforced what they had always believed: Marner is one of the best playmakers in the world, a top-five talent on most nights.
“We ran him out of town,” Krowitz said.. “Yeah, it’s hard for him to be there. We made it hard. The media made it hard for his family. People are crazy. They’re going to his house with death threats and bullsh*t. What kind of fan base is this? We’re out of our minds.”
Al Sager wearing his Marner jersey the right way before flipping it aroud, courtesy Al Sager.
He said it without malice, just as fact. He and Sager had lived it. They had watched the pressure build year after year. They had seen what it did to players. And still they showed up in another team’s building, wearing that player’s jersey, holding a sign that read like a confession and a prescription at the same time.
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It was funny because it was absurd. It was also funny because it was true. Sometimes the only way to process a decade of near-misses and one devastating off-season is to get on a plane, stand along the glass in enemy territory, and cheer for the guy who gave you everything he had.
Before they left to their seats and before the warmups, they saw the player they had come to support. Marner looked at Krowitz holding the sign, laughed, shook his head, and gave a small nod.
It was enough.
They own their own company, CF Solutions in Richmond Hill, and they have wives and kids and full lives. They could have stayed home. Instead they flew to Vegas, stood along the glass, flipped a jersey, held up a sign, and reminded everyone watching that the loudest, most toxic voices do not speak for every Leafs fan who has been there from the beginning.
