Felix’s Hockey Takes: State of the San Jose Sharks Franchise

Responsibility

My fellow colleague, AJ Strong, recently also wrote about the Sharks’ struggles this year. One of the things he mentioned was accountability. Well, responsibility and accountability go hand in hand.

Coaching Staff

Former head coach Peter DeBoer had a responsibility to ice the lineup that gave the Sharks the best chance of winning every game. His responsibilities also included balancing out the ice time distributions so that no group was tired and overworked. He failed at both aspects.

Former assistant coach Steve Spott oversaw the power play, which he was responsible for icing the best power play units and deploying the best strategy to gain entry into the offensive zone, get set up, and establish and maintain offensive zone pressure — through puck possession and puck retrieval — to generate high quality scoring chances, which would theoretically lead to a power play goal. More often than not, especially this year, that never happened.

Former Sharks goalie coach Johan Hedberg worked with both Martin Jones and Aaron Dell. Neither were great last season, and their subpar performance unfortunately carried into this season.

With the departure of Rob Zettler earlier in the offseason, who had temporarily been brought in to coach the defense, Bob Boughner made his return as the defensive coach. As you all may remember, Boughner spent the last two seasons down in South Florida with the Panthers. Unfortunately, Boughner still hasn’t figured out the defense for this team this year. Perhaps he’s lost his touch?

With the departure of DeBoer, Spott, Dave Barr, and Hedberg, Boughner took over as interim head coach. As a result, three coaches were promoted up from the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League. Mike Ricci was named assistant coach, and put in charge of special teams. Roy Sommer, the AHL’s all-time winningest coach (regardless of how you feel about him), was named the associate coach and put in charge of the defense. Finally, Evgeni Nabokov retained his title of goalie coach for the Sharks looking to help improve the positioning and fundamentals for both Jones and Dell’s game. He’d previously worked with Josef Korenar, former Shark/Barracuda Antoine Bibeau, and Andrew Shortridge.

While Boughner and the current coaching staff have been better about implementing changes in the system, I don’t feel like they’ve truly done enough to get the most out of the players, as the team still hasn’t found much cohesion since the coaching changes.

Players

The players have a responsibility to execute simple plays within the system to minimize the risk of turnovers. Note that I say “minimize”, because no one is perfect. Hockey, like any other sport, is a game of mistakes. Heck, even life is filled with them. Humans are prone to error. It’s a part of human nature. It’s a part of the learning process.

That being said, you want to try to reduce the amount of mistakes made. At this point in the season, the San Jose Sharks are sitting dead last in the Pacific Division and the Western Conference with 37 points. If we were to even talk about a miraculous playoff push out of nowhere, they are 9 points out of the last Wildcard spot in the West. They’ve dug themselves into a deep hole, so they basically have no room for error the rest of this season. They simply don’t. 

The leadership core has a responsibility to step up in times like these, both on the ice and in the locker room. Before I mention former captain Joe Pavelski, yes I know. He’s no longer with San Jose. But for the sake of this article, hear me out. 

Pavelski was never a tell-it-like-it-is guy for the media. We all know that much. But we do know he was vocal in the locker room. Plus, his leadership showed on the ice. He earned his way into the NHL and to his eventual captaincy through hard work. He captained the 2015-16 iteration of the San Jose Sharks to their first-ever Stanley Cup Final. He also quite literally bled for the team in Game 7 during Round One of the Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Logan Couture has always been known to be a clutch leader on the ice, scoring timely goals at critical moments of a hockey game like Game 7. He also deposited the empty netter against St. Louis that would seal the ticket for the Sharks in that trip to the Cup Final. Unlike Pavs, he has always been a guy who never minced words about the team’s performance. If his teammates played well, he would praise them. If they didn’t play well, he would call them out on their poor performance. 

Now … where is Logan? Where is “Jumbo” Joe Thornton, even? Where is Tomas Hertl? Where are Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson? It hurts to say, but Logan hasn’t been the leader we know him to be on the ice. Could the captaincy be weighing on him, or could it be that the Sharks are sinking too fast for him to handle? Or could it be both? In the meantime, Thornton looks like his age has finally caught up to him. Hertl might be dealing with an injury. Burns might be injured as well. Both he and Karlsson are turning pucks over like no tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I’m highly disappointed with EK65. 

When the Sharks traded for Erik Karlsson, there was much excitement, obviously, because they were bringing in an elite-caliber defenseman who has two Norris Trophies in his résumé, and also almost single handedly — as then-captain — carried the Ottawa Senators to their first Stanley Cup Final since 2003. Needless to say, his first season in teal wasn’t a very memorable one, with a groin injury to boot. 

However, after being officially anointed by general manager Doug Wilson as the highest paid player — not just defenseman — in franchise history, his second season has been less than stellar as well. Granted, he’s had some nice offensive plays that have contributed to goals. Of course, we can’t forget the pass to Barclay Goodrow for the overtime game and series winner against the Golden Knights. But what has he done well defensively? Almost nothing. There have been times when he’s been absolutely pylon’d for a goal-against.

Even offensively at times, he’s had trouble keeping the puck away from opposing sticks. Right now, as I’m typing this, I’m reminded of the atrocious turnover by Karlsson in the neutral zone that led to a goal-against by the Red Wings’ Tyler Bertuzzi, which opened up the scoring on New Year’s Eve. All because EK65 gets paid $11.5M a year to make fancy plays that, more often than not, don’t work.

I’ve been one of Erik Karlsson’s biggest supporters since he was traded to San Jose. My thought last season was always, “oh, he’s just trying to get acclimated to his new team, he’ll be back to his former self eventually”. This season, with surgery successfully done to repair his groin, I truly thought we were going to see the Karlsson of old again. I have to say I’ve been very underwhelmed by his performance thus far. 

Also, to anyone who says it’s not just on Erik Karlsson, that’s the point of this article. I’m not just trying to call out EK65. This is a team-wide issue, but we’re also talking about the highest paid defenseman on the team. 

This team has a responsibility to play much better than they have been. They have a responsibility to show up every game. They have a responsibility to the fans who spend their hard earned cash to attend the home games and cheer them on as well as the fans who travel well on the road to represent Sharks Territory, to put together a respectable effort against their opponents in every game. They owe it to the fans who bleed teal each and every night to give a damn, and give much more effort than they gave on New Year’s Eve against a struggling and rebuilding last placed Detroit Red Wings team.

Last but not least, Doug Wilson has a responsibility to give his coaching staff the best players available. Again, AJ has questions, especially in terms of Doug Wilson’s and the front office’s role in it, so I’m not going to step over his toes.

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