Mitch Marner gets chilly and loud reception in his Toronto return with Golden Knights

TORONTO (AP) — Mitch Marner stepped on the ice for warmups and heard some boos during an initial lap around a rink he knows well.

The Vegas Golden Knights winger experienced more jeers on his first shift. That noise only got louder when Marner finally touched the puck, followed by an unexpected ovation after heading to the bench.

In his first game back at Scotiabank Arena since a drawn-out divorce with the Toronto Maple Leafs was finalized last summer, Marner felt a range of emotions Friday night.

And left with a 6-3 victory.

“Passionate fan base,” Marner said. “They love their team. It was interesting the whole night. When warmups hit, it really just felt odd and weird.”

The Maple Leafs honored Marner, who spent nine seasons in Toronto playing for the team he cheered for as a kid, during the first television timeout. There was a mixture of boos and cheers throughout the 40-second video tribute as many fans rose to their feet. Marner raised his right arm and tapped his chest in acknowledgment with Vegas already up 2-0.

“I was trying to just take it in and not get emotional,” he said. “Still got a lot of love for these fans.”

Asked if there was a sense of relief the homecoming was finally over, Marner replied with a smile: “Completely, definitely, honestly.”

Vegas captain Mark Stone thought the atmosphere hit the right notes all night.

“You’re expecting boos, right?” Stone said. ”(Marner) doesn’t play for the Maple Leafs anymore, but they tip their cap to what he did for this organization.”

Drafted fourth overall in 2015, Marner enjoyed plenty of regular-season success with the Maple Leafs, but was a lightning rod of criticism in hockey’s biggest media market for Toronto’s inability to break through in the playoffs.

A slow march out the door from his de facto hometown last season as unrestricted free agency loomed finally ended when he was shipped to Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal that netted Marner an eight-year, $96 million extension.

“That (booing) was fine,” he said. “I knew was it going to come … the cheering when I was going off was pretty funny. I didn’t see that one coming.”

Marner, who picked up two assists in a 6-5 overtime victory against his old team on the Las Vegas Strip last week, has 12 goals and 40 assists in 50 games this season.

“Our guys were going to try to bring their best for Mitch,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “And they did.’

Marner’s new club sits comfortably in a playoff position atop the Pacific Division standings, while Toronto is on the outside in the Eastern Conference post-season race.

“The booing I had, it was what I expected,” he said. “Tried to play through it, play with the puck, play my game. And do my thing.”

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Vegas Golden Knights' Mitch Marner (93) tries a wrap around on Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz (41) during third period NHL hockey action in Toronto on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights' Shea Theodore (27), Pavel Dorofeyev (16) and Mitch Marner (93) celebrate a goal against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Toronto on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights' Mitch Marner (93) and Toronto Maple Leafs' Nicolas Roy, right, battle for the puck during first-period NHL hockey game action in Toronto, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner warms up before playing against his former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in NHL hockey game action in Toronto, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights' Mitch Marner, center, waves to the crowd as they have a tribute to him while playing against his former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, during first-period NHL hockey game action in Toronto, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner warms up before playing against his former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in NHL hockey game action in Toronto, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

Vegas Golden Knights' Mitch Marner (93) waves to the crowd as they have a tribute to him while playing against his former team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, during first-period NHL hockey game action in Toronto, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Tensions over U.S. President Donald Trump's plans to take control of Greenland have driven a wedge in the once iron-clad link between MAGA and Europe's far-right.

The rift seems to signal that ideological alignment alone may not be enough to temper worries among European nationalists over Trump's interventionism abroad.

Far-right leaders in Germany, Italy and France have strongly criticized Trump's Greenland plans. Even Nigel Farage, a longtime ally of Trump and head of the Reform UK nationalist party, called Trump's Greenland moves “a very hostile act.”

During a debate Tuesday in the European Parliament, far-right lawmakers typically aligned with Trump overwhelmingly supported halting a EU-U.S. trade pact over their uneasiness with his threats, calling them “coercion” and “threats to sovereignty."

Such a divergence between Trump and his European acolytes came as some surprise.

Far-right parties surged to power in 2024 across the European Union, rattling the traditional powers across the bloc’s 27 nations from Spain to Sweden. Their political groupings now hold 26% of the seats in the European Parliament, according to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Less than a year ago, Europe's far-right parties gathered in Madrid to applauded Trump's election under the banner “Make Europe Great Again,” while Elon Musk, before his fall from Trump’s graces, had boosted European far-right influencers and figures on X, including Germany’s radical right Alternative for Germany party.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance drew scorn from within Germany and across Europe after he met with AfD leader Alice Weidel during elections in February. The party, with which mainstream parties refuse to work, upset German politics by doubling its presence in the Bundestag to become the nation's second-largest party.

Yet deep divisions within MAGA itself over Trump’s approach to foreign affairs has reverberated in Europe, with his actions over Greenland, Venezuela and Iran forcing his political allies to favor their ideological convictions over their deference to the U.S. president.

France’s far-right National Rally has at times vaunted its ideological closeness to Trump, particularly on immigration.

A year ago, the party sent one of its senior figures, Louis Aliot, to attend Trump’s inauguration. In turn, Trump has staunchly defended party leader Marine Le Pen, describing her conviction for embezzling EU funds as a “witch hunt.”

Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old National Rally’s president and a MEP, has praised Trump’s nationalist views, saying to the BBC last month that a “wind of freedom, of national pride” was blowing across Western democracies.

In recent days, however, Bardella has appeared to distance himself from the U.S. administration. In his New Year’s address, he criticized U.S. military intervention in Venezuela aimed at capturing then-President Nicolás Maduro, calling it “foreign interference” designed to serve “the economic interests of American oil companies.”

Going further, Bardella on Tuesday denounced Trump’s “commercial blackmail” over Greenland.

“Our subjugation would be a historic mistake,” Bardella said.

Another Trump ally, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, echoed this sentiment. In an interview on Rai television Wednesday, she said that she told Trump during a call that his tariffs threat over Greenland was “a mistake.”

Yet the reactions among European right-wing leaders has not been lockstep. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, widely regarded as the trailblazer of Trump’s brand of illiberal populism, has been careful to avoid even the slightest criticism of the U.S. president.

Facing what is likely to be the toughest election of his 16 years in power in April, Orbán has built his political identity around his affinity with Trump, promising voters that his close relationship with the president will pay hefty dividends.

Trump, Orbán has insisted, is Europe’s only hope for peace amid the war in Ukraine and a guarantor of national sovereignty.

Orbán has sought to cast Trump's threats on Greenland and capture of Maduro either as beneficial for Hungary, or none of its business.

“It’s an in-house issue … It’s a NATO issue,” Orbán said of Trump’s plans for Greenland during a news conference earlier this month, adding that any proposed change to Greenland's sovereignty can be discussed within NATO.

Despite his staunch advocacy of national sovereignty, Orbán also praised the U.S. action in Venezuela, calling the country a “narco state” and suggesting Maduro’s ouster could benefit Hungary through future cheaper oil prices on world markets.

Hungary’s reluctance to push back on Trump’s actions reflected similar positions among far-right leaders in the EU’s eastern flank.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki, seen as an ally of both Orbán and Trump, said in Davos this week that the tensions over Greenland should be solved “in a diplomatic way" between Washington and Copenhagen — not a broader European coalition. He called on Western European leaders to tone down their objections to Trump’s conduct.

In the neighboring Czech Republic, prime minister and Trump ally Andrej Babis has declined to speak out against the U.S. threats to Greenland, and warned against the EU allowing the issue to cause a conflict with Trump. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico has remained silent on Trump’s Greenland designs, even as he met with the president in his Mar-a-Lago resort last week.

Still, Trump’s deposing of Maduro led Fico to “unequivocally condemn” the action, calling it a “kidnapping” and the “latest American oil adventure.”

The ideology linking MAGA and its European allies might survive recent disagreements by doubling down on old, shared grievances, said Daniel Hegedüs, Central Europe director of the German Marshall Fund.

He pointed to recent votes against Brussels’ leadership in European Parliament by far-right European lawmakers on the EU migration pact and halting the massive trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of five South American nations.

“If Trump continues that way, posing a threat to the sovereignty of European countries, then of course that will divide the European radical right,” he said.

“We don’t know whether this division will stay with us or whether they can again unite forces around issues where they can cooperate. Those issues can be damaging enough for the European Union.”

Spike contributed from Budapest and Corbet from Paris.

FILE - President Donald Trump shakes hands with Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, left, during a signing ceremony on his Board of Peace initiative at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)