Well I disagree with you, in my opinion aside from being more clutch. Linden was significantly more physical, and had much higher effort and compete level. Also considering the disparity in linemates, I don't believe Marleau to be better offensively than Linden.
To me Marleau played the last 15 years of his career trying not to get hurt. The only metric Marleau beats out Linden is longevity.
I don't think that's unfair. I don't think it's outlandish to prefer Linden. Marleau is a better skater, better stickhandler, maybe a little smarter too. I guess I'd rather have Linden as a 3rd liner on my team than Marleau as a 2nd liner, if that makes any sense...assuming, I have a contending team, that is.
That said, I'm just trying to balance things a little bit. If someone came in and celebrated Marleau's 500 goals and 1200 points, I'd try to bring that down as that doesn't really represent Marleau's impact. On the flip side, folks are naming some pretty chintzy players here and trying to sell that Marleau was worse than them. But that undercuts how good Marleau was in his prime for me.
Like, here's the thing...the Sharks quit at the end of the DPE. Selanne was lost to free agency. Owen Nolan only returned Alyn McCauley for the roster (decent player, he was). Ricci fell off. Damphousse was sliding. Graves retired. Sundstrom returned a backup goalie. Even the goalie depth took a hit, as Kiprusoff was dealt for a pick.
The Sharks went from low-key, hipster Cup pick to being sort of gutted to a degree. In 2004, that was Marleau's team. And Marleau's game changed. It got brushed away earlier in the thread as "a lowly 57 points" or whatever...but he was really, really good in '04 and the proceeding seasons.
That Sharks team in '04, in particular, was thought to be a last place team. And yes, they played good team defense, and Scott Hannan and those guys were a revelation under Ron Wilson. Nabokov actually had a nice playoff showing. But it was the line of Damphousse, Marleau, and Niko Dimitrakos that got them awfully close to going to the Final. They lost to Kiprusoff.
Look, again, I don't want Marleau in the Hall. I don't think he's a special player. I just think this thread and this forum got a little too far down on him at this point. It's been a decade since his prime, and he played through all that time haha - I think folks might have forgotten a little bit, that he was at least a semi-threat for a good decade in there.
i am kind of all over the place here with my comps
i do believe that marleau was basically gartner without the 80s, maybe even a little better because he played so much center
i also noted in another thread recently that i think kirk muller was better than linden
and two more guys i’d add to this conversation that muddy things are vincent damphousse and jeff carter.
in terms of offensive ability, nobody was truly elite. looking only at primes, linden would be on the bottom; carter next because he was inconsistent; muller, damphousse, and marleau i’d group together as pretty close although when he was on carter was right there with them. gartner is the wild card because the man could score goals at a consistently higher level than the rest of these guys but his overall offensive contributions were lower (other than linden and carter). partially this is because he was the only one who was a dedicated winger, but i do think ability is the egg and role is the chicken here.
but marleau vs linden specifically, just looking at their primes and disregarding how long the primes were, marleau was the more talented and reliable offensive player. but linden was a significantly better player in the other aspects of the game, imo. then you have the discrepancy in playoff performance, although i have often pointed out that pre-lockout when everyone called that owen nolan core a bunch of chokers, marleau was seen as the one guy who was clutch.
with marleau i think there’s a guy he could have been, which is a very different player than what he was. he had the size, the skating ability, A- offensive skills, knew how to play in his own end, i remember often watching the sharks play us and being scared because if he was feeling it and played the physical all round game he was capable of on paper, he could dominate us. but we only ever saw that in spurts and in crunch time we could almost always get him away from it. but by the same token, that whole line of him, thornton, and heatley, just by virtue of them being so big and strong, even if they weren’t playing physical, was extremely hard to contain.
idk, i’m just rambling now. but i don’t think comparing him in terms of prime contributions (disregarding length of prime) to linden is a diss. though i might be romanticizing linden here.
