San Jose Sharks: Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau have different priorities

After spending most of their adult lives together on the San Jose Sharks, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau took very different paths in free agency paths.

For the better part of 15 years, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau called the San Jose Sharks home.

The duo were teammates, friends, and partners in crime. Outside of a season and a half stint in Toronto and a brief, eight-game stint where Marleau tried to chase a championship with the Pittsburgh Penguins – a move that ended in a shocking qualifying round exit against the Montreal Canadiens – the duo were mainstays of San Jose the likes of which are very uncommon in any sport – as a part of the city as the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph or the ‘Welcome to San Jose’ sign.

Together, Thornton and Marleau appeared in 2,655 regular season games, scored 769 goals, and spent 48,065 minutes on the ice over 35 combined years with the Sharks.

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But in 2021, that partnership may be over once and for all.

You see, when 2020-21 offseason opened up, Thornton and Marleau were both unrestricted free agents. While it’s not particularly common for a pair of 40-year-old centers to be in high demand when the market opens up, two of the increasingly shrinking number of NHL players born in the 1970s actually had pretty robust markets versus their projected contributions to a perspective team.

Is that surprising? Sure, but what’s even more surprising is how differently the two long-time friends decided to handle what may be their final NHL contract.

For Thornton, the choice was clear. By his own admission, he needed to “win a Stanley Cup” and knew that wasn’t going to happen in San Jose. No offense to the fine people of the Silicon Valley, but very few teams go from eighth place to the playoffs, let alone from eighth place to the finals. The Toronto Maple Leafs, by contrast, have been a 40-plus win team from 2016-19 and likely would have extended that streak to four seasons if it wasn’t for the abbreviated nature of the 2019-20 season.

Even if Thornton’s role shrinks considerably in his new home, going from a first/second liner to a third or even fourth line option, he still has a far better chance of making it back to the playoffs and maybe even reaching his ultimate goal than he did in a 16th season with the Sharks.

And as for Marleau? Well, his decision couldn’t have been more different.

After pulling a Thornton at the trade deadline and accepting a trade to the Penguins for a conditional pick, Marleau opted to return to the Sharks for his third tenure with the team, in what can only be called a legacy-locking move. While he too suggested a desire to win a Stanley Cup before his hockey days are done, it’s more likely than not that that won’t happen in San Jose this season or at any point over the next few years.

Maybe he could be traded yet again at the deadline in 2021, but would he even want that? Such a move worked out really, really bad in the lead up to the NHL Bubble, and would a 41-year-old with four kids who lives in San Jose really want to have to reacclimate himself to a new city and a new team again?

I kind of doubt it.

Not to be too cynical, but Marleau’s decision to return to the San Jose Sharks feels about as much about his life off the ice as it does his limited remaining time on it. He can continue to play the game he loves, hang out with his family, and maybe turn an eye to a sweet media gig off the ice when his career comes to a close. After 22 years in the NHL, what better way to go out than on your longtime team? Plus, with Thornton gone, Marleau may actually be able to play a substantive role in Bob ‘the Boogieman’ Boughner‘s rotation.

Is either approach necessarily the right one? Outside of the Maple Leafs – or, I guess the Sharks – winning the Cup, we may never know, but it will be incredibly interesting to see how things turn out for a pair of longtime teammates – brothers even – who clearly enjoy each others company.

When their respective careers ultimately come to a close, it’s safe to say Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau will go down as two of the best players to ever don a San Jose Sharks uniform. The duo rank near the top of virtually every record in the franchise’s near-30 years of operation and will all but certainly have their jerseys hanging in the rafters of the SAP Center – or wherever the team plays moving forward – when their careers come to a close. When/how that ultimately happens, however, will still be incredibly fun to watch, even if their paths may only cross as out-of-conference foes moving forward.