I definitely agree; I would actually put Thornton as a top 10 pure center in the league. However, the problem is that everyone remembers their playoffs failures, and no one has better flameouts in the playoffs than the Sharks too. It really skews how good they can be; they have possibly the most talented top 9 on paper, with Couture, Pavelski, Thornton, Marleau, and Burns (though Chicago & Colorado'd definitely want a word in that debate, and I'd say they're more talented in actuality).Idoit40fans wrote:Marleau was the guy I was mentioning standing out to me. If this weren't listed as a redraft league, maybe not, but I think he and Thornton should ahve gone a lot earlier. I've also never bought the playoff choking thing. He's streaky in general, which is why some years he isn't there in the playoffs. But looking at him from a production standpoint, you're looking at basically the same production rate in the playoffs as you see in the regular season. Last I checked, I'm pretty sure the point rate drops slightly with the goal rate going up slightly. He was 3+4 against the Kings this year in the playoffs. Of course if you look at the distribution of those points throughout the series, maybe that feeds into the choking narrative. Thats still a point a game against the Kings though.Avyran wrote:Hoping that my other two choices for this pick fall through to me in the next two rounds. Was a little worried about Marleau's age, but then I saw that he has played all 82 games in 4 of the last 5 seasons. Also scored 30 or more goals those same 4 seasons. Forgot how important he was to San Jose's penalty-killing and power-play as well.
Only knock on him is the fact that many claim he chokes in the playoffs, and I'm gonna work through that.
Marleau actually wasn't my choice for that pick leading up to it. However, after looking over all of the different stats, I felt that Marleau was a can't-pass pick, like how Chara was in my 4th pick. I think that having a more physical team around him (as I am currently trying to build, in case people couldn't tell, haha) would open up more space for Marleau & kick him back up into that 40-goal zone, although his age might keep him from attaining that.