Why Your Team Sucks: San Jose Sharks
2021 SEASON:
The most surprising thing the Sharks did all season was play their home games in Arizona for a month. The rest went pretty much exactly as predicted. The main time I tend to notice the Sharks is when their fans talk smack about Vegas when they play them and then lose like 5–1. Other than that, their on-ice product is more or less interchangeable with the other California teams. I’m filling out the bottom of my Pacific Division predictions by doing “eenie-meenie-miney-moe” between the three teams. It’ll probably be as successful as relying on charts or whatever.
The only thing worse than a team that gives up too many goals is a team that gives up too many goals and also can’t score any to save its life. The Sharks’ best shooting comes from guns their players bought by bribing cops. The most offense generated from a Sharks forward in the last two years came from a Logan Couture tweet.
The Sharks had one heartwarming moment last year with Patrick Marleau surpassing Gordie Howe’s record for the most games played in NHL history. Now that he’s reached that pinnacle, Marleau needs to retire. Having him continue to play for the Sharks should qualify as elder abuse.
HEAD COACH:
I know I’m a year late on this, but…Pete DeBoer is gone? And the Sharks managed to foist him on their biggest rival?! Wow; that five minute major really broke Vegas’ brains, didn’t it?
Anyway, the Sharks current coach is Bob Boughner, who is just an alt-universe Rob Riggle that wears Affliction and bathes in $5 cologne from Walgreens. He is most notable for you forgetting that he coached the Panthers for two seasons. Imagine being the most forgettable head coach in recent Panthers history. That’s like being the dumbest person in QAnon.
NEW THINGS THAT SUCK:
The good news about the Sharks’ offseason is that they were not hit hard by the expansion draft. They lost Alex True to Seattle, who I am told is someone that definitely exists. I’m assuming that he was the Kraken’s second choice, behind “pass.”
The Sharks finally bought out Martin Jones, resulting in $1.67M per season that will remain on the books until 2027. That’s still pretty good value for paying Martin Jones not to play for you, even if there are 30 teams paying $0 for that privilege. Replacing Jones is a goaltending tandem of Adin Hill and James Reimer, which is cost-effective if nothing else. Hill has played 49 career NHL games, while Reimer is 33 years old and was relegated to being a third-stringer last year. This is emphatically an improvement for the Sharks, which says a lot.
Evander Kane has now been the subject of multiple league investigations and all of his teammates hate him. Kane’s net worth has a more one-sided rivalry with Vegas than the Sharks do.
THINGS THAT STILL SUCK:
Two years ago, anyone with half a brain could see that the Sharks were going to bottom out the way they did. The signs were clear to any objective observer. Martin Jones was leakier than a gas station toilet. The blueline was at its equivalent of the late seasons of LOST, when the writers had given up and were basically just re-creating Bible stories. Not even the most ardent hockey followers had heard of half the guys on their roster.
The exception to the rule was, of course, Sharks management. The front office sincerely believed that their team was still a contender. They bought into false hope based on being in the 2020 NFC East of divisions and a fake playoff run in 2019 which featured fortuitous officiating. I cannot emphasize that latter part enough. They needed a BS five-minute major to beat Vegas in the first round. They needed a BS disallowed goal to beat Colorado in the second round. A hand pass OT winner that shouldn’t have counted was the only thing keeping them from being swept by the St. Louis Blues of all teams. Granted, refs alone cannot win you games, but this was really the equivalent of a jailbreak where everyone just leaves all the doors open and calls the prisoner an Uber. It is the least impressive conference final run I have ever seen, which is including the two different occasions that the Carolina Hurricanes got swept.
Fast forward to 2021 and this team is bad and only going to get worse. Brent Burns can now qualify for an AARP card. Marc-Edouard Vlasic is counting the days until he can retire and take over the family business as King of Pickles. Their best defenseman is Erik Karlsson, who is now basically the guy on the “Operation” board. These players account for half their blueline and $26.5 million in cap space that will remain on the books until 2025. This is a big reason why they have had to supplement their team depth with guys that they plucked from beer league.
Sharks fans fancy themselves as lovable losers, which is mainly because of the “losers” part. It’s impossible to offend most people if you’re never been a legitimate threat to win anything. People only believe that the Sharks are lovable because their in-state rivals have been a Kings team consisting of convicted felons and a Ducks team that used to have Corey Perry and the corpse of Ryan Kesler while playing in a city full of antivaxxers. You really have to account for the fact that they’re being graded on a curve relative to the rest of California. It’s like being a straight-A student at Arizona State.
There’s really nothing lovable about this team. Their captain has gone full MAGA. People only love Burns because he looks like the frontman for a ZZ Top revival band that plays in dank dive bars on Tuesday nights. Sharks fans despised the 2011 Canucks as villains, yet welcomed Raffi Torres with open arms and wrote thinkpieces about what a nice guy he was after he decapitated six people. They play in a city where no one can afford tickets (or anything else) because it’s overpopulated with tech bros who were bullied in high school and went on to invent stuff like “toilet paper, but disruptive.”
The high point of this franchise was being the historical footnote of “The Team That Was Also There” against the 2016 Penguins. People outside of California still think Brent Burns is good because he’s in commercials where he forgets how to eat chocolate bars. Those commercials are the only time hockey fans will ever see Brent Burns during the playoffs again.
Also, “Sharks” is one syllable, not twelve, you rubes.
REASONS FOR OPTIMISM:
The Sharks should be able to prime themselves for an aggressive rebuild once their cap situation improves, which should allow them to become a competitive team by about…*checks Capfriendly*…2030 at the earliest.
