Patrick Marleau

Patrick Denis Marleau (born September 15, 1979) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward. With 1,779 NHL games played, he is the all-time leader in regular season games played in league history. He passed the record previously held by Gordie Howe in his 1,768th game on April 19, 2021. Marleau scored 1,197 points during his entire NHL career. The San Jose Sharks drafted Marleau second overall in the 1997 NHL entry draft, and Marleau spent the vast majority of his NHL career with the franchise, becoming its all-time leader in goals, even strength goals, power play goals, points, shots, and games played. Marleau is also the fourth player in National Hockey League history to record 900 consecutive games played, reaching the mark one game after breaking the overall games played record. He was the third-last active player who played in the NHL in the 1990s, with the other being Zdeno Chára and longtime teammate Joe Thornton.

Marleau is one of just five NHL players to play 1,400 games with one team, and the youngest to reach both the 1,300- and 1,400-game marks. He was seven games short of becoming the youngest player to play in 1,500 games with one team before signing with his second team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in 2017. After two seasons with Toronto, he returned to San Jose in 2019, and was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins before the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. After failing to win a Stanley Cup, Marleau returned to the Sharks as a free agent for the 2020–21 season, his final season. Marleau holds the distinction of playing the most NHL games (both regular season and playoffs) without winning the Stanley Cup, an active streak as of the end of the 2023–24 season. His number, 12, was retired by the Sharks on February 25, 2023.

Internationally, Marleau won gold medals with Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. Marleau, one of the most important players of the Sharks for nearly 20 seasons, was known as one of the fastest skaters in the NHL and exhibited a high standard of playing ability combined with gentlemanly conduct. This earned him two nominations for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy and made him a popular player both among fans and his professional peers.

Marleau was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, to parents Denis and Jeanette Marleau and grew up on his family farm near Aneroid. A sign near Saskatchewan Highway 13, just outside Aneroid, proclaims that it is Marleau's hometown. His parents have said they knew Marleau had a special talent when he was playing with 16- and 17-year-old players as a 14-year-old at the 1995 Canada Games in Grande Prairie and was interviewed by Hockey Night in Canada reporter Scott Oake.^{[citation needed]}

Marleau's junior hockey career took him to the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League (WHL), where he played two seasons. In his rookie campaign in 1995–96, Marleau exploded onto the scene in Seattle scoring 32 goals and 74 points, leading his team to a playoff loss to the defending Memorial Cup champions, the Kamloops Blazers, featuring future NHL star Jarome Iginla. The series ended 4–1, but Seattle took three of the losses to overtime before the Blazers won.

During the 1996–97 season, Marleau was named captain of the Thunderbirds and led them to a second-place finish, behind the Portland Winter Hawks, in the Western Conference during the regular season. Marleau improved to 51 goals and 125 points, finishing top-three in the WHL in both categories. In the playoffs, Marleau led the Thunderbirds to the club's first Western Conference Championship before the team bowed out in the WHL Finals to the eventual Memorial Cup runner-up Lethbridge Hurricanes in four games. Marleau finished second in the WHL's Player of the Year voting, losing to Peter Schaefer of the Brandon Wheat Kings.

Following his second year of major junior, Marleau was drafted second overall by the San Jose Sharks in the 1997 NHL entry draft, behind future Sharks teammate Joe Thornton, who was selected by the Boston Bruins. Although he struggled early in his career, Marleau learned to combine his excellent offensive talents with defensive prowess from former Sharks head coach Darryl Sutter.

Marleau was the youngest player in the 1997 draft class, and he debuted immediately at the start of the 1997–98 season. This conceptually makes him the youngest player to ever play in the NHL (in the modern draft era it would be impossible to debut at an earlier age than Marleau, as he was born on the last day of the draft cut-off, and debuted immediately in the first game of the next season).