(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

Take a look at the points leaders on Sunday morning and you will see some fairly incredible things.

Yes, Patrick Kane is a mile ahead of anyone else in an era when no one can score, Erik Karlsson is tied with Tyler Seguin, Sidney Crosby has overcome his slow start to pull up to a point a game, and Johnny Gaudreau is close to it despite being on a rotten team.

But down in eighth in the league, a point behind Crosby and Gaudreau, sat Joe Thornton. That's 36-year-old Joe Thornton. That's almost-got-traded-a-while-ago Joe Thornton. That's might-be-able-to-do-this-forever Joe Thornton.

Among the great number of things you can say about another amazing season from Thornton is that he's not in any way a power play specialist, even now. His 2.46 points per 60 minutes of full-strength hockey is seventh in the league among players with 500-plus minutes. His score-adjusted possession number of 56.2 percent is 27th. His share of high-danger chances of 63.8 percent is first. Commensurately, his goals-for percentage (72.2 percent!!!!!) is also first. Basically, when he's on the ice, the Sharks annihilate their opponents at levels typically unseen in the NHL.

In fact, Thornton's current goals-for percentage is the eighth-best seen in the last nine seasons, and if all you're looking for in a player is the ability to outscore an opponent, that'll just about get it done.

And when I mentioned that stuff about not just being a power-play specialist — which you often see for high-quality playmakers as they age into their mid-30s — well, he's still 14th among forwards in power play points per 60 as well, meaning that he hasn't lost that touch either. In fact, the Sharks' goals per 60 minutes of power play time when he's on the ice is seventh-highest in the league.

So the fact that Thornton does so many things well really ought to have him in the MVP conversation, at any age, let alone with him pushing 37. This is, in fact, one of the absolute best all-around seasons of Joe Thornton's entire career, which is saying something given that he's a 100 percent surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer. But again, you have to consider his age as a majorly impressive factor in all this.

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When you turn 34 or 35 in the NHL, the wheels are liable to come off at any minute. Every summer you choose to come back is a huge gamble, because you might find that, even if you're under contract, you no longer belong in the NHL. You'll occasionally see guys try to gut it out and end up looking really bad for it (Martin St. Louis's final days in New York, for example). And sometimes you see guys give it one last go and decide they just can't go any more (Brett Hull in Phoenix).

Thornton has had two such summers already and approaches his third looking like an All-Star. In all, there have been only 237 age-35-plus seasons in the NHL since 2007-08, and among those players, Thornton is understandably elite. Of that number, a little more than half (126) are from forwards.

And really, it's a weird group. You have some high-level players that were still playing because they were still extremely productive (Rod Brind'Amour, Daniel Alfredsson, Martin St. Louis, Mats Sundin, Jaromir Jagr) and others who were just grinders eking out a few more paychecks (John Madden, Tomas Holmstrom, Stu Barnes, Mike Grier). There isn't a whole lot in the middle, as you might expect. As such, Thornton's performance this season is a head and a few shoulders above that group as a whole.

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