Historic night for Sharks star chasing legend’s record
Marleau’s 1,768th game tonight will see him pass NHL great Gordie Howe
Had Patrick Marleau been born one day later in 1979, tonight would be just like any other in the National Hockey League.
Instead, it will be a historic night. It will be the night that Marleau, the longtime San Jose Sharks star, breaks one of the most hallowed records in hockey, a record held by the iconic Gordie Howe.
When Marleau steps onto the ice at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, he will officially mark his 1,768th NHL game, surpassing Howe, aka Mr. Hockey, who played 1,767 in a career that spanned from 1946-1971 with an encore in 1979- 80.
“I played against Gordie Howe his last year,” Sharks GM Doug Wilson said Sunday, “and for Patty Marleau to be breaking this record that stood for almost 60 years. I don’t think people are fully understanding the enormity of this. But in the next day or two I think they will.”
Marleau, 41, will be honored tonight during an on-ice ceremony at the first TV timeout. His wife, Christina, and the couple’s four sons will be on hand. A special video montage will be played featuring tributes from former teammates and from Howe’s son, Mark.
Marleau’s first whack at the record came on the day he was born — Sept. 15, 1979. Had he been born one day later, on the 16th, he would not have been eligible for the 1997 NHL Draft because he wouldn’t have met the league’s minimum age requirement. His career would have been delayed for a year. To
night would be just another night in the NHL.
“Would he be setting the record a year from now? I don’t know,” Wilson said to his own question. “I don’t think any of us have the answer to that.”
It’ll take a lot to topple a record that has stood for 59 years, and it’s not all serendipity. There is everything Marleau needed to do to play all those games, including the last 897 in a row, an ironman streak that ranks fourth all-time. (The record is 964 by Doug Jarvis.) There is everything the Sharks needed to do, starting with two decisions they made, four months apart, in 1997.
The first was to use the No. 2 pick in the draft on a 17-year-old kid from Aneroid, Saskatchewan, a farm town of 50 people. The other was to start the season with that kid on the roster.
The Sharks had finished the previous season with the second-worst record in the league (27-46-8, 62 points). As such they owned the No. 2 pick.
The No. 1 pick belonged to the Boston Bruins — they had finished 26-47-9, one point worse than San Jose — and the No. 1 player in the draft, by universal acclaim, was a big playmaking centerman out of the Toronto area named Joe Thornton. (Yes, for most of 15 years, ending in 2020, the Sharks had the top two picks of the ‘97 draft on their team.)
The opinion on who should be the No. 2 pick was less universal, but Marleau was the favorite. He was coming off a season in junior hockey in which he’d scored 125 points in 71 games for the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League. What’s more, despite his age, he had the body of a fully grown man, 190 pounds on a broad-shouldered 6-foot-1 frame.
“He was a big kid that could skate,” said Tim Burke, then the Sharks’ scouting director.
Or, in the words of Todd McLellan, the former Sharks coach and fellow Saskatchewanian: “He’s a big, thick, strong Saskatchewan farm boy. He’s farm tough.” (McLellan notes there was another of this proud breed: Gordie Howe, born in Flora, Saskatchewan, the population too small to publicize, evidently.)
Even so, it was standard procedure for NHL teams to send their draft picks back to juniors for further development. That’s certainly what Don Nachbaur was expecting to happen. Nachbaur, the junior-team coach in Seattle, had big plans for the Thunderbirds. With Marleau back for another year, they could win the WHL and contend for the Memorial Cup, junior hockey’s biggest prize.
Nachbaur had to start thinking differently after a meeting with Marleau at the end of the Thunderbirds’ summer camp.
“He shook my hand and said, ‘Goodbye, Coach. Thanks for everything you’ve done,’ and I knew that was it. I’d never see him again. And he never did come back,” Nachbaur said.
In San Jose, the Sharks had a new coach, Darryl Sutter, and a blend of players that included an emerging leader in Owen Nolan, former Stanley Cup winners Mike Vernon and Stephane Matteau, a tough guy in Marty McSorley, and a pair of veteran newcomers in Kelly Hrudey and Tony Granato.
Hrudey recalled a conversation he and Granato had about Marleau one day after practice early in training camp.
“Tony says, ‘Kelly, that kid is unbelievable. I’m trying my best to keep up with him, but it’s impossible,’” Hrudey said. “It looks like he’s not trying hard when he’s skating, but he is absolutely flying out there.”
“The first day of training camp I knew Patty could make our team,” Granato said in an email. “He could fly! And what a kid! Us older players were all fired up at the young legs and energy he brought us!”
Before the end of training camp, it was obvious to all. The kid would open the season on the Sharks roster.
“If you looked at the lineup,” said Burke, “he was better than a lot of guys that we had... Youngest player in the draft and ends up playing right away with men — and never looked out of place.”
Marleau didn’t just make the roster. He played in 74 of 82 games and was the Sharks’ No. 3 scorer
with 13 goals and 19 assists. He played 155 NHL games as a teenager. The eight games he missed as a rookie remain the most he ever has missed in a season. Most remarkably, he hasn’t missed a game since turning 30.
“The amazing thing is he has done this not as a role player,” Wilson said. “He has been a dominant player for all those years.”
Mike Ricci, the former Sharks center and fan favorite, has been witness to almost all of those years. He joined the Sharks as a player in Marleau’s rookie season, played alongside him from 1997-2004, and has served in the team’s front office for most of the last 15 years.
“Being a natural skater, being in tip-top physical condition and preparing himself, working hard off the ice and on the ice, these are the results you get,” Ricci said. “I used to tell him all the time, ‘You could play until you’re 60.’ And obviously I was exaggerating a bit, but maybe I wasn’t exaggerating as much as I thought.”