Four games into the season, Patrick Marleau leads the NHL with eight goals. In fact, thanks to his hot start, now only Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos have scored more goals since 2008.
He’s also sporting a 40% shooting percentage and has benefited heavily from the Sharks‘ unsustainably hot power play. You don’t need to carry around a slide rule or fashion clothing out of spreadsheets to realize this isn’t going to last. When Marleau’s shooting percentage inevitably regresses towards his career mean, the narrative generators will come out in full force to apply extraordinary explanations to mundane variance. Most will likely trot out the timeworn complaints about streaky Marleau’s streaky streakiness (he’s so streaky!) despite compelling evidence that Marleau is no streakier than any other NHL scorer.
But surely there will be other unfounded storylines crafted. What do you think will be the narrative that overwhelming swaths of the media and fanbase cling to when Marleau’s shooting percentage eventually crashes?
You pick the Marleau narrative:
| Was gutless, found some spare guts during the lockout but then lost them. | 63 |
| Pacemaker replacing his nonexistent heart malfunctioned. | 15 |
| Not a big-game player, since I’ve arbitrarily defined the last [insert number of games since Marleau scored] games as “big.” | 91 |
| Extra eyebrow hair slowing him down. | 64 |
| Jeremy Roenick hasn’t made enough announced visits to Marleau’s house lately. | 64 |
| A player’s shooting percentage can fluctuate wildly over small samples. We shouldn’t be overly concerned about Marleau’s recent scoring slump just like we shouldn’t have read too much into his fast start. | 101 |
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