Aneroid’s Patrick Marleau retires after 23 NHL seasons

Aneroid’s Patrick Marleau bid farewell to hockey on Tuesday in an essay for The Players’ Tribune.

Its title was simply “Thank You, Hockey.”

“Today, I announce my retirement from hockey,” the 42-year-old wrote. “It’s bittersweet for sure, but I have so much to look forward to. Who knows what the world has in store for me?

“If you would have told that kid on the frozen pond that he would break a games-played record held by none other than Gordie Howe, he would have thought you were crazy. It was never something I aimed for; it was just me loving this game so much that I never, ever wanted to hang up my skates.”

He officially did just that Tuesday after 23 NHL seasons.

In his essay, Marleau thanked a number of people, including the older siblings who allowed him to concentrate on hockey as a youngster.

“My brother and my sister (Richard and Denise), having at least one of my parents if not both travelling with me on weekends, they had to do all the chores on the farm,” Marleau told Jamie Nye and Drew Remenda on The Green Zone on Tuesday. “They had to make sure ice got chopped, cows got fed (and) grain got cleaned.

“Whatever it was, they pulled up all the slack and allowed me to chase my dream.”

Marleau played two seasons in the WHL with the Seattle Thunderbirds before being selected in the first round (second overall) of the 1997 NHL draft by the San Jose Sharks.

As an 18-year-old, he joined a Sharks team that had a number of veteran leaders, including Kelly Hrudey, Mike Vernon, Mike Ricci, Adam Graves and Todd Gill.

“I couldn’t have asked to come into a better locker room or organization at that time with all the great players that were there,” said Marleau, who as an NHL rookie lived with the Hrudey family.

“These were all the players that I had just been watching on Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada and wishing I could be out there with them. Then the next day, you’re in the locker room with them learning from them, which was a great experience.”

Marleau played 19 seasons with the Sharks before spending two seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He went back to San Jose for the 2019-20 season, but the Sharks traded him to the Pittsburgh Penguins to give him a shot at the Stanley Cup.

He returned to San Jose for the 2020-21 campaign, which turned out to be his last in the NHL. He wasn’t signed by a team for the ’21-22 season.

Marleau retires as the Sharks’ all-time leader in goals (522), points (1,111), power-play goals (163), short-handed goals (17) and game-winning goals (101).

His NHL career numbers include the aforementioned record of 1,779 regular-season games played, as well as 566 goals and 631 assists. He appeared in 195 playoff games in his NHL career, accumulating 72 goals and 55 assists.

He never did win a Stanley Cup; the Sharks lost in the NHL final in 2016.

Marleau won Olympic gold medals with Canada in 2010 and 2014, a gold and silver at the 2003 and ’05 world championships respectively, and a gold at the 2004 World Cup.

He wrote in his essay about his experiences after the gold-medal game at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, when he and his wife were in a cab trying to go to dinner with Carlyle’s Brenden Morrow and his wife. Fans were in the streets celebrating — and Marleau was in the middle of it.

“It was one of the coolest things and I’ll never forget it,” he told Nye and Remenda. “To be in the crowd but not really be in it was pretty cool.

“We had just played the game, we had just won, we had just done it and then to see the celebration going on in the streets of Vancouver was surreal.”

Marleau is the second high-profile NHL player from Saskatchewan to retire this year. Regina’s Ryan Getzlaf called it a career at the end of the Anaheim Ducks’ 2021-22 season.