We're seeing the next generation of star players take the ice right in front of our eyes.
While Jarome Iginla's son Tij, a Kelowna Rockets forward and Utah Mammoth draft pick, recently featured at the World Juniors and is bound to make his NHL debut soon, there is now another member of the next generation.
Meet Landon Marleau, the son of former Calgary Flames superstar Jarome Iginla.
On Family Day Monday, Landon Marleau would make his OHL debut for the Kingston Frontenacs. Though he hasn't replicated his father's iconic moments just yet, he did make a mark (pun intended?) heading into his debut, sporting a black eye that would probably make Paul Bissonnette and other NHL fighters jealous.
Having previously played for the San Jose Sharks' developmental program, Landon Marleau eventually started playing for the Wellington Dukes of the Ontario Junior Hockey League before recently getting called up by the Kingston Frontenacs.
During his debut, which saw the Frontenacs lose 3-2 to the Brantford Bulldogs, Landon Marleau registered two shots, with one of them being a scoring chance.
The Kingston Frontenacs currently sit in seventh in the Eastern Conference with a 24-26-2-2 (wins, losses, overtime losses, shootout losses) record. That has Kingston at fifty-two points total so far this season, thirty-six back of their 2024-25 total. That said, the Frontenacs do have a thirteen-point edge on the Brampton Steelheads, the first Eastern Conference team outside of the eight-team conference playoff field, for a postseason spot. And with fourteen games remaining, Kingston could clinch a playoff berth within the next month.
Through almost 1,800 career NHL games, Patrick Marleau scored 566 goals while tallying 631 assists. In his 195 playoff games, he scored 72 goals and recorded 55 assists. Twenty of his NHL seasons came with the San Jose Sharks, with the remaining handful of seasons being split between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Pittsburgh Penguins.