Patrick Marleau ‘very happy’ to be back with Sharks ahead of first home game in San Jose since 2017.
Confluence of events allow longtime Shark to return to San Jose
SAN JOSE >> Patrick Marleau woke up Saturday morning and fell right back into a familiar routine — driving to the Sharks practice facility and entering the dressing room to begin another day in the NHL.
“The smile hasn’t come off my face, for sure,” Marleau said after practice. “To be able to come back here and walk in this locker room and see my stuff up and see my name, it feels good to have somewhere
to go and somewhere to play.”
It certainly beats what Marleau’s routine was just a week or two ago, when he was renting ice time on his own dime at Solar4america Ice in San Jose — skating in a Toronto Maple Leafs practice jersey — still without a contract.
But a confluence of events — even going back roughly three months, but especially during the first week of the Sharks’ season — helped Marleau return to the team he played for from 1997-2017.
Tonight, he’ll once again wear a teal jersey in front of the home fans as the Sharks face the Calgary Flames at SAP Center. It will be Marleau’s second game back, after he scored two goals for the Sharks in their 5-4 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.
It’ll also be his first home game with the Sharks since April 22, 2017, when they lost
Game 6 of their first-round series with the Edmonton Oilers and were eliminated from the playoffs.
Asked Saturday if there were opportunities to sign with another team before Wednesday, when he officially joined the Sharks, Marleau paused for a moment to find the right words.
“It was a really ... difficult situation,” he said. “There were a lot of ups and downs. I’ll leave it at that.”
Changes for the Maple Leafs seemed inevitable after they were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs for the second straight season.
Marleau had taken his share of criticism in hockey’s hotbed, recording two assists in the seven-game series after a regular season in which he had 16 goals and 37 points — his lowest totals since his rookie year — in 82 games.
The Leafs also needed to clear salary cap space to help sign a handful of players, including winger Mitch Marner, that summer. Keeping Marleau’s $6.25 million cap hit for the 2019-20 season was untenable.
So on June 22, nearly two years after he signed a three-year, $18.75 million deal with Toronto as an unrestricted free agent, Marleau was traded by the Maple Leafs to Carolina.
Marleau waived his no trade clause and agreed to be dealt, as his family had already put its Toronto-area home up for sale, looking to return to the South Bay after two years in Southern Ontario.
Marleau said he and Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas, “communicated the whole time. Kyle was great about it and, Pat (Brisson), my agent, we were all in it discussing, so there was definitely some options on the table there for us.
“It worked out. I’m back here and they got the cap space. Took a little longer than I thought, but I’m happy that I’m here,”
The Hurricanes wanted to keep Marleau, but the now 40-year-old forward wanted to move back to California. On June 27, Carolina general manager Don Waddell announced the Hurricanes would buy out the final year of Marleau’s deal, making “Mr. Shark” a free agent.
“Carolina had interest in Patrick for him to be part of the team this season, however, Patrick wanted to be a Shark at all cost. He will retire as a Shark,” Brisson wrote Friday in an email. “At that point I started communicating with (Sharks GM) Doug Wilson on a regular basis in order to try making it work.”
Had the Leafs not been in such a cap crunch, would Marleau still be in Toronto?
“We’ll never know,” Marleau said.
At the time of the trade, there was speculation that Marleau would be reunited with the Sharks.
“I read all that stuff and you think about it, and I’d be lying to tell you that (Wilson) and I didn’t discuss it at different points,” Sharks coach Pete Deboer said. “But there was a commitment here to really give the young guys an opportunity.”
The Sharks’ training camp in September was unlike any other in recent memory. Important roles needed to be filled by younger players after forwards Joe Pavelski, Gus Nyquist and Joonas Donskoi all left via free agency and defenseman Justin Braun was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Forwards Danil Yurtaykin and Lean Bergmann — in their first seasons in the Sharks organization — and defenseman Mario Ferraro, a first-year pro, all made the team out of training camp. Forward Dylan Gambrell, a 2016 secondround draft pick, was also on the team for the start of the season.
Marleau, meanwhile was still waiting for a call.
“The Sharks have made promises and commitments to their young players as part of their development,” Brisson wrote. “If they were to look at bringing a veteran player obviously Patrick was going to be Doug’s choice all along.”
It didn’t take long for those decisions to be expedited.
A day before the start of the regular season, forward Evander Kane was suspended by the NHL for three games for physical abuse of officials. For the Oct. 2 opener against the Vegas Golden Knights, the Sharks had Yurtaykin and Bergmann in their top-six forward group — hardly the plan coming into the year.
The Sharks were throttled 4-1 that night in Vegas — a score that flattered the visitors — and were outclassed 5-1 two days later by the Golden Knights at SAP Center. That was followed by a 3-1 loss on Oct. 5 to the rebuilding Anaheim Ducks.
Adding to the overall malaise were a spate of injuries. Defensemen Dalton Prout, Jake Middleton and Tim Heed were hurt within the first two games. Marcus Sorensen was hurt against the Ducks, taking out another experienced forward just as Kane was set to return.
By that point, discussions between the Sharks and Brisson had intensified.
“As Doug said, he and I spoke frequently throughout the summer and camp,” Brisson wrote. “The conversations picked up to another lever sometime last week.”
Just before the Sharks played the Nashville Predators on Tuesday, Wilson announced that the team would be bringing back Marleau — the franchise icon who still owned nearly every individual offensive team record. Without Marleau, the Sharks went on to lose to 5-2 to Nashville, but with Kane back, looked better than they had in the previous three losses.
The day after the loss to the Predators, Marleau signed a one-year, $700,000 contract with San Jose and landed in Chicago early Wednesday morning, right around the time the Sharks were getting in from Nashville.
On his ninth shift of the first period, on a Sharks power play, Marleau set up in the high slot and redirected a pass from Erik Karlsson past Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford. Late in the second period, he collected a rebound in front of the net after a Burns shot on goal to score his second of the game.
Less than 40 minutes into his Sharks return, Marleau was already tied for the team lead in goals.
“He created two goals and played the right way the whole game,” Deboer said Saturday. “On the right side of the puck, defensively on the right side.”
In Saturday’s practice, Marleau was back on the Sharks’ top line with Logan Couture and Timo Meier. The days of skating by himself or with friends in a blue jersey are over. He’s back to where he wanted to be all along.
“I was hoping to be able to come back here,” Marleau said. “There was a lot of ups and downs between the trade and between that happening, but where it ended up, I’m very happy.”