Marleau Jersey Retirement

I screwed up. I was waiting for a friend to get back to me about if he'd come up and all of the reasonably priced tickets to the legends game sold out. I might try to poke around and see if a scalper is selling anything remotely reasonable but I'm not paying the ~$300 they're reselling for now.

Thanks for posting this, jamnjon! Looks like you had a decent spot for the event.

Oh, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear any trades until after Saturday. Jonathan Becher got up and joked "I have a trade to announce. No, not really, we'll let today be Patrick's day."

Edit: SJHN video 1 - Marleau's speech
SJHN video 2 - Marleau Q&A

And I managed to grab a ticket to tonight's game (in addition to tomorrow).

It was a lot of fun. There was for sure a lot of banter/trash talking, though of course we couldn't hear most of it. All 5 Marleaus scored including a hat trick by the youngest (of course the 2 smallest were being allowed lanes straight to the net with minimal attempts at stopping the shots). The oldest Marleau kid actually looked pretty good out there.

Randy, Drew, and Rusy were interviewing players throughout the game and that's where we got most of the banter that we were privy to. There were threats of pulling the goalies (Grier was the coach of one team, Hrudey was the coach of the other), they asked Jumbo what he learned by playing with Clowe. I'm pretty sure someone played the puck from the bench a la Clowe right before that but I didn't quite see it for the same reason I missed it when Clowe did it in LA (I was at the game and there were a bunch of bodies of players in the way). Nolan sort of tackled Ricci right in front of me (I missed the first goal because I was watching that and the puck went in all the way at the other end of the ice). The two youngest Marleau kids had a bit of a scrum between them, Nabby looked like he was trying to score a goal but the shot hit a player from the other team leading to a 2-on-0 against him which eventually caused a goal. The players had smiles on their faces pretty much the whole time

Nolan tackling Ricci:


Lineup announcement:


Anthem:


Warmups:




Group photo (I'm sure there will be a direct angle/professional photo posted elsewhere):


Marleau interview:

Seconding caopine’s thank you. Awesome to see these photos! Thanks, jj!

Not a full thing but there's an SJHN story with a bunch of highlights

Not that they should, but I would have paid PPV to watch this- especially with some behind the scenes/ on the bench footage and interviews.

-Even at 43 in an exhibition playing at 1/4 speed, it's still somehow great to watch Patty skate. He's got such an ease to his stride.

-Random thought but even past-prime Jumbo from five-ish years ago playing 3L center could really help us with trade value right now. Labanc on Jumbo's wing could pump up a return for him even with that contract and I'm sure there are others. It's funny thinking about how much extra contract money Jumbo made for his wingers over the years. Taking good players and helping them be stars and not to be mean, but making players like Melker look like a decent NHL'er for a while. (Although when Jumbo was on the team, we weren't really ever sellers at the deadline.)

Thanks for the continuing great coverage, jamnjon!

Man, that was a great ceremony. Not a dry eye in our house, that’s for sure. He was the creator of so many special moments over the years, it was perfect to culminate in a special night like this. Thank you for all the great memories, Patrick. Congratulations on the well-deserved honor!