Marian Hossa is 37 years old – almost 38 – and still going.
As a matter of fact, he doesn’t really plan to stop. Via Elliotte Friedman’s 30 Thoughts (#16):
“In some of those [World Cup of Hockey] games, he was playing 23 minutes,” said Bowman, part of Team North America’s management group. “We were staying at the same hotel and I asked him if he was okay with that. He said, ‘I feel great.’ We’d talked about resting him during the season, but now? We’ll see how it goes.”
Hossa said he benefitted from the Blackhawks’ unusually long summer and, at age 37, plans to play the four remaining years of his contract.
Hossa will be 38 in about a month and a half. So by the time his contract runs out, he’ll be 42 years old.
That kind of longevity isn’t often season in hockey. Just three players in the NHL today are 40 or over: Jaromir Jagr (44), Shane Doan (40), and Matt Cullen (40).
But 42? Only 16 skaters have ever played at that age in the NHL, and there’s no guarantee Doan or Cullen ever get added to that list.
Hossa is having an amazing season so far, and he hasn’t appeared to really hit a wall throughout his career. If he can keep this up until he’s 42, then that will really put him in a special league of players – and if he can keep doing it with a couple more deep playoff runs, then that’ll be all the better.