MARLEAU’S CUP DREAM HANGING BY A THREAD
Cancellation of playoffs could cost veteran final shot at championship with Penguins
Patrick Marleau has a beard. It’s a rather thick one. Looks like he’s been growing it for days, if not weeks.
If this were a normal year, we might call it a playoff beard. But in today’s self-isolating world of sweatpants and optional showers, it’s just a sign of boredom.
It’s been almost a month since the NHL was forced to shut its doors indefinitely because of the spreading coronavirus. The regular season was supposed to have ended last weekend. The Stanley Cup Playoffs would have started sometime this week.
Now, they might not start at all. For Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, who were on an online video chat with their former Toronto Maple Leafs teammate on Monday, it means they might not get a chance to right the wrongs of the season and prove they can contend for a championship — much less advance out of the first round.
For Marleau, who is on his fourth team in the past 12 months, the consequences are even more ominous.
This wasn’t just another playoffs for him. It was to be his last playoffs. His last chance at winning the one thing that has eluded him during a career that has spanned two decades: a Stanley Cup.
“The short amount of time I spent there was great,” said Marleau, who had a goal and an assist in eight games since arriving in Pittsburgh at the trade deadline. “The guys were great, and yeah, just an opportunity for myself to get another shot at winning the Cup with the Penguins.”
Marleau is 40, and he’s without a contract for next season. Based on how things have unfolded this season, there’s no guarantee a team will give him one.
Last June, after disappearing in the playoffs, the Maple Leafs shipped him and the final year of his Us$6.25-million salary to Carolina as part of a salary dump that also included Toronto giving up its first-round draft pick. The Hurricanes bought him out five days later, leaving Marleau out of work and waiting for an offer that didn’t seem like it was ever going to come.
Marleau was sitting at home without a contract when NHL training camps started. And he was still without one when the season began. It wasn’t until San Jose stumbled out of the gates with a 0-4-0 record that the Sharks eventually signed him to a one-year deal. Even then, it was just for the league minimum.
Five months later, Pittsburgh acquired him for a conditional third-round pick that gets upgraded to a second-rounder if the Penguins were to win the Cup.
Not that Marleau, who had 10 goals and 20 points in 58 games with the Sharks, needed any extra motivation. And Penguins GM Jim Rutherford knew it.
As the former general manager of the Hurricanes, Rutherford had acquired Mark Recchi and Doug Weight at the 2005-06 trade deadline in similar deals. At the time, Recchi was 37 and had gone 13 years since winning his only championship. Weight was 34 and had never won a championship in his 13 years in the league.
Though their best days were long behind them, Rutherford had hoped they might turn back the clock for one more chance at glory. It worked out better than anyone could imagine. Each scored 16 points, though Weight was so banged up that he could barely lift the Stanley Cup above his head.
Years later, Rutherford brought Ron Hainsey to Pittsburgh in what was supposed to be a depth role for a 35-year-old who had never even appeared in a playoff game. Due to injuries to the rest of the defence, he ended up playing top-pairing minutes for their second of back-to-back championships in 2016.
In an ideal world, Marleau would have found the Fountain of Youth this spring. He would have found his legs, and found chemistry playing with Evgeni Malkin, and found a way to contribute for a Penguins team that knows how to win when it matters the most. He would have found that extra gear that was missing in his last year in Toronto and in San Jose this season.
But now, you have to wonder if we’ve seen the last of Marleau and a playoff beard he’s grown 20 times over his 22-year career.