I was lucky enough to catch an interview as I was driving home with the radio analyst for the San Jose Sharks, an ex-player named Jamie Baker. Baker’s a former college and NHL player, who spent a few seasons with the Sharks, and I was impressed listening to him over the radio – he was concise, he was logical, and he made a bunch of very good points.
At one point in the interview, Baker was asked if coach Todd McLellan’s decision to strip Marleau of his captaincy was the reason he has played so well this season. It’s a common theory that I’ve heard at least a dozen times in the media, and it’s a theory that Marleau has consistently disagreed with. Baker took Marleau’s side, reminded us all that he’d been a very good player last season, he’d been playing injured down the stretch, and that the addition of Dany Heatley was obviously a big help.
It’s difficult to measure how much impact Heatley’s had on Marleau’s game, but Baker’s comment about playing injured grabbed my attention. Marleau missed some time at the end of March with a “lower body injury”, but his play dropped off before that – actually at almost exactly this point in the season. Marleau’s played in 58 games this season; let’s compare his numbers this year through the same number of games last year.
| Season | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- |
| 2008-09 | 58 | 33 | 30 | 63 | +25 |
| 2009-10 | 58 | 38 | 26 | 64 | +25 |
The thing about those numbers is that they’re so… similar. Marleau has more goals this year, but the points and the plus/minus are spitting images of each other.
Unfortunately for Marleau, over the season’s final 20 games (including two in the chart above), he managed just five goals, eight points and a minus-9 rating. His play actually rebounded a little bit in the playoffs; he managed three points and an even rating over the six game series against the Ducks.
I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect that the injury which sidelined Marleau in March was a nagging problem that flared up towards the end of February. If nothing else, it’s certainly interesting that his production and two-way play fell off a cliff towards the end of the season. It also casts a lot of doubt on the popular narrative that the burden of being team captain was what weighed Marleau down.
02.09.10
@ 11:28 AM EST
Great work.
Where did you find that info on Marleau’s production after 58 games? Did you just add it up yourself from Hockey-reference.com?
In any case, it shows again how injury impacts performance. It’s a huge factor, repeatedly.
02.09.10
@ 11:39 AM EST
@David: I’m not sure why that’s a surprise to anyone. Given how much elite athletes rely on their bodies, I don’t get why anyone would expect anything else. Sure, you can say that if you’re healthy enough to play, you’re healthy enough to be criticized, but to that I’d say, maybe there should be a little more stringent requirements on returning to play. It’s one thing to rip up your groin and try to come back in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final (see: Crosby, Sidney), but it’s another to spend the entire season playing with a busted shoulder (Horcoff, Shawn) or several weeks trying to play through a torn abdominal muscle *in November*, costing your coach his job (Emery, Ray).
02.09.10
@ 11:46 AM EST
Thanks David. To answer your question, Marleau’s official NHL profile has game-by-game information, which I just plugged into an Excel spreadsheet.
02.09.10
@ 1:44 PM EST
Either that or Marleau’s about to crash and burn this season. But no, it was probably the injury.
02.09.10
@ 1:53 PM EST
You just have to look at other players to realize how big of an impact even the slightest of injuries can hurt a player. For example I’m going to use Spezza. Who up until he came back from his injury he was playing way below the level he can. Since he came back he’s been scoring like crazy and looks like the Spezza of two seasons ago. At the start of the year he was also playing well then things suddenly went downhill. Why? I would have to guess his back something that has bothered him throughout his career. He was hitting and skating harder then I and most other Sens fans had ever seen him before but that new physical style seemed to ware on him and eventually he became less and less effective on the offensive side. But the injury allowed him to rest his back as well and recover and now he looks great once again. Aside from the usual fancy passes that most players of his skill level try and turn over every now and again… So ya I’d say injuries can adversely affect a players ability and make you say what happened to him.
02.09.10
@ 3:39 PM EST
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jonathan Willis, Jonathan Willis. Jonathan Willis said: The 2009-10 edition of Patrick Marleau me of someone – oh, yeah, the 2008-09 edition of Patrick Marelau: http://bit.ly/9YHwJo #sharks #nhl [...]