NASHVILLE — A Patrick Marleau reunion with the Sharks might happen, after all.
Off to an 0-3 start and encountering depth issues — perhaps not unexpectedly — with their forward group, the Sharks are among a few teams that recently have reached out to Marleau’s camp, according to Pierre Lebrun of TSN and The Athletic.
The Sharks had scored just scored three goals before Tuesday’s game against the Nashville Predators. They’ve lost 4-1 and 5-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights and 3-1 to the Anaheim Ducks.
A reunion between Marleau and the Sharks was rumored this summer after the Carolina Hurricanes acquired the longtime forward from the Toronto Maple Leafs and bought out the final year of his contract. Marleau then became a free agent and reportedly expressed a desire to return to the team he spent 19 seasons with from 1997-2017.
Marleau and his family have moved back to the Bay Area from Toronto and Marleau has been skating on a regular basis at Solar4America Ice in San Jose.
The Sharks lost forwards Joe Pavelski, Gus Nyquist and Joonas Donskoi to free agency July 1, leaving several holes on the roster. General manager Doug Wilson, though, nixed the idea of bringing back Marleau last month, saying he wanted to give younger players in the organization a chance to compete for a spot on the NHL roster, and give others — such as Marcus Sorensen and Lukas Radil — a chance at a larger role.
“The commitment is to give those players the opportunity that they deserve,” Wilson said Sept. 6, the day the Sharks signed Joe Thornton. “It in no way takes away how we feel about Patrick Marleau. We will honor him and he’ll always be a Shark in our mind. The 19 years he gave us were phenomenal.”
But the results so far have been underwhelming, at best.
Sharks coach Pete DeBoer has shuffled his forwards lines around since the start of the season, moving players up and down and in and out of the lineup, searching for the right combinations.
Evander Kane will return to the ice Tuesday following the completion of his three-game suspension to start the season. But fellow winger Sorensen is out and considered day-to-day with an undisclosed injury. The Sharks have also been trying to integrate two rookies — wingers Danil Yurtaykin and Lean Bergmann — into their lineup with mixed results.
Learning a new system, not to mention a new language and smaller ice surface in Yurtaykin’s case, neither player has registered a point in their first three games. Bergmann is slated to play against the Predators and Yurtaykin will be a healthy scratch.
Room under the NHL’s salary cap of $81.5 million for this season was also an issue after the Sharks signed defenseman Erik Karlsson to an eight-year contract worth a team record $92 million.
The Sharks also had to sign restricted free agents Timo Meier and Kevin Labanc, although the average annual value of both players’ deals were fairly economical. Meier’s four year deal has an AAV of $6 million and Labanc’s one-year contract is worth $1 million.
As of Tuesday, according to CapFriendly, the Sharks only had $35,000 in cap space. But they could clear space to sign Marleau by demoting one of their waivers-exempt players to the Barracuda of the AHL.
Marleau had 37 points in 82 games with the Maple Leafs last season.
Marleau, the second overall selection in the 1997 NHL Draft, remains the Sharks’ all-time leader in several categories, including games played (1,493), goals (508) and points (1,082).
