Patrick Marleau's return to San Jose was deceptively normal

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If you ignored the particulars of the evening, Patrick Marleau’s 750th career game at SAP Center was not much different than the 749 that preceded it.

He was the last player out of his own locker room, and shared the ice with Brent Burns, Joe Pavelski, and Joe Thornton to start the game. Throughout it all, Marleau remained typically stoic.

Even with that in mind, you can’t ignore the particulars, and Monday night’s were particularly strange.

The post-Marleau era is now 11 games old, and it’s still fundamentally weird to see him in another uniform. The Sharks deftly handled his pregame tribute, but it’s hard to fathom that tribute came during Marleau’s playing career, not after it ended.

What was perhaps oddest of all, though, was that the Sharks were just fine without him. San Jose dominated Toronto from start to finish, save for a moment of kick-to-stick brilliance from Auston Matthews.

The Sharks only scored one goal at even strength, but they didn’t need any more, thanks to a dominant defensive effort. It’s one thing to hold the high-scoring Maple Leafs to just two goals, but it’s another to hold their offense to just nine shots on goal in the game’s final 40 minutes.

It was easily San Jose’s best game of the young season, and a strong start to a difficult portion of the schedule. That kind of an effort, with Marleau on the visitor’s side of the ice, is hard to wrap one’s head around.

Maybe it’s not if you’re Jeremy Roenick, but San Jose won 430 games at SAP Center with Marleau involved, and he was a key figure in many of those. The Sharks have played games without him, but playing against him is another matter entirely.

His familiar, yet foreign presence certainly seemed to confuse the home crowd. Fans cheered, clapped, and chanted ‘Pat-ty’ during the pregame festivities. The loudest gasp came not when Frederik Andersen made one of his 36 saves, but when Marleau missed a half chance in the second period.

Marleau’s return brought a sense of finality to his July departure, as if to remind Sharks fans that yes, he’s really gone. The cheers will always be there for him when the Maple Leafs make their annual trip to the Bay Area, even as things won’t ever truly be the same.

For a few moments on Monday night, though, it was if Marleau had never left, and things were deceptively normal.

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