Former Leafs "team dad" Patrick Marleau gets Hall of Fame snub

The Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be getting another representative in the Hockey Hall of Fame today.

Patrick Marleau was eligible for the first time to be named to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but was looked over on this go-around.

Marleau had 43 goals and 41 assists in 164 games for the Maple Leafs in his career, playing the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons. He became an immediate fan favourite and was often dubbed “team dad” before being shipped off to the Carolina Hurricanes in a salary-dump trade, before eventually being bought out.

“As with most professional athletes, I feel like I could play forever. I wish I could play forever — my boys would like to see me play for the next 10 years if they could,” Marleau wrote in a 2022 article for The Players’ Tribune at the time of his retirement. “But there comes a time when I have to be grateful and thankful for the time I have been given and to make way for the next generation to make their own dreams come true.”

Marleau played 23 seasons in the NHL, spending most of them with the San Jose Sharks while also having a Penguins stint. He had 566 goals and 631 assists in 1,779 games, the last of which was the most in NHL history.

Shea Weber, Pavel Datsyuk, Jeremy Roenick, Colin Campbell, David Poile,  Natalie Darwitz, and Krissy Wendell-Pohl made up the class of 2024.

“I moved my family to the center of the hockey universe and put on a Maple Leafs sweater. Playing for the Leafs was surreal. A real ‘pinch me’ moment,” Marleau added about signing in Toronto as a free agent.

“That opportunity I gave [my family] was like being a kid again. But I was now the older veteran on a team full of crazy-talented young kids. Kids like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Kids that are closer to the age of my own sons than to me. Watching them and their love of the game made me fall in love with hockey all over again. I have no doubt that those guys will win a Cup one day, and when they do, I know they’ll remember all those mini-stick battles in the basement.”

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