Marleau just won’t stop
As he reaches 1,600 game milestone, forward remains valuable on ice and off
Patrick Marleau played an NHL game Monday night. This was not news except that there was a game scheduled and it was played, because Patrick Marleau has not missed a scheduled NHL game since April of 2009, and just 30 since 1997. This one happened to be his 1,600th, but that’s just a round number, another one. He keeps playing.
“I mean, genetics,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock before Monday night’s game against the Boston Bruins, when asked how the 39-year-old Marleau has voyaged this far into hockey’s realm of possibility. “He’s worked very, very hard, unbelievable skater, loves the monotony of the game. Great, great human being. You could go on and on: lucky with injuries, the whole thing. Hard worker, great pro, great person. So important for this team it’s not even funny and I’m not even talking about what he does on the ice. He’s fantastic.”
Babcock loves his fellow Saskatchewan boy, and pushed for that three-year deal, and Marleau keeps playing. If he plays all 82 for the 11th time in his career he will pass Ray Bourque, Larry Murphy, Scott Stevens, Dave Andreychuk, Chris Chelios and Ron Francis, and will sit fourth all-time behind Jaromir Jagr, Mark Messier and less than two full NHL seasons behind Gordie Howe. Marleau, in Toronto, has one year left on his contract.
Asked how his routine has changed, he mentions stretching more, and getting to the rink earlier; he got that one from Joe Thornton in San Jose. Asked about the last serious injury he remembered, Marleau took a second and gazed into nothing, exhaling. Hmm.
“Uh, well, broken hands, things like that in playoffs,” says Marleau. “Prob- ably surgery with a torn meniscus in ’01, something like that. I was able to play with it.”
He plays. The Leafs entered Monday night without Auston Matthews for the 14th consecutive game, and without the contract-less William Nylander for the 25th, and Boston was without Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara and Charlie McAvoy, so it was not a precise rematch of their seven-game playoff series last year.
It was another game on a drumbeat schedule in a division where four of the top five records in the league lived, going into Monday night.
It was a night you try to survive, to get to the next one.
“Well, you say measuring stick and you say playoff game,” says Babcock. “Only playoff games are the playoffs. But there are games you can look at . . . I know for a fact when we go in to play some games, just by how the guys are vibrating, that it’s a real game.”
Babcock sometimes loves his veterans too much, and feels he can rely on Marleau, and maybe he’s still right.
But he tends to focus on his off-the-ice impact. Asked about the Marleau family’s higher-profile friendship with Matthews and Mitch Marner — in San Jose, the four Marleau boys yelled and hugged Matthews and Marner when they saw them after the game, and one grabbed Marner’s headphones to inspect them — Babcock expands it.
“You mean like (Kasperi Kapanen) and everyone you’re not hearing about?” said Babcock.
“Like, everybody. Or any trainer or any coach or any- body who would look like they might be tired that day. Or, I mean, just anybody. He makes you a flat-out better human being just by walking by you.
“You can’t replace that stuff, especially with a young group. If you want to win, you’ve got to have people that do it right every day. It’s hard to do it right every day. Imagine doing it right every day, 82 times, where everyone is watching you every time you make a sound, any time you do anything there’s a microscope all over you? He’s that good.”
On the ice, under that microscope, Marleau is probably fading. On the surface his numbers are hanging on: going into Monday night he was producing about a half-point per game, as he has for the past three seasons, in his late-career plateau.
But Marleau’s points per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 were 1.47 last season, and 1.53 the year before in San Jose, and this year they’re 1.04, tied for thirdlowest among forward on the team with Connor Brown. His shooting percentage of 9.3 per cent is the second-lowest of his career — he was right at the number last year, at 13.3 per cent — so maybe that will rise again. There are more nights where even his eternally smooth skating doesn’t catch the eye anymore and he seems to vanish. Some nights, he looks 39.
But he plays. The Leafs are waiting for the return of their two young guns, trying to embrace the monotony of a season that is basically a waiting period until they get another chance in the playoffs. Asked about staying present in both the small picture — like, say, Game 7 in Boston — and the big one, Brown says, “It’s so easy to say that, and it’s easy to be on the bench, and holler that and be in the room, and talk about it, but to go out and execute it, I feel like it’s something you have to go through, and understand the experience.”
Marleau probably shouldn’t be a top-six forward when they get to the real games, and that might be a hard thing for Babcock to do. But you can bet Marleau will be there, rain or shine, a sort of human miracle. “It had to come from Mom and Dad and growing up on the farm,” he says.
“Everyone’s still trying to get better, and that’s what I’m still trying to do, it’s fun.” Marleau never lets anyone all the way in; he smiles and squints and speaks in a soft voice, and seems happy to be here. He’s been that way forever. Or at least, that’s what it feels like.