Not many last-place NHL teams in the past seven years were as bad as the San Jose Sharks are 10 games into this season, writes Adam Proteau.
The San Jose Sharks are bad. Like, “New Coke” bad. Like, “Howard The Duck” bad. B-A-D-bad bad. And of all their early-season humiliations, Thursday night’s 10-1 loss to Vancouver was the nadir at this point in the 2023-24 NHL campaign.
Once again Thursday, the Sharks’ offense was basically nonexistent. In 10 games, San Jose has 10 goals-for. Ten. As in, an average of one goal per game. And their record is the worst in the NHL, at 0-9-1.
Think of that dubious feat. They do not have a regulation-time win in 10 games. They’ve surrendered 44 goals in that period of time. That is 4.4 goals against per game. They’re about as brutal as it’s been in the past seven years, and that ugly record confirms it.
Indeed, since 2017, only one team – the Arizona Coyotes – has had a record as awful as the Sharks’ record 10 games into the season. Two times in that span – in 2017-18 and 2021-22 – the Yotes posted a 0-9-1 mark.
The Detroit Red Wings got out to a 1-7-2 mark in 2018-19. Ottawa twice had the worst record in the first 10 games – first, a 2-7-1 record in 2019-20, and again the next season with a 1-8-1 mark. And last season, the Canucks had the worst mark through 10 games, with a 2-6-2 record.
If Sharks GM Mike Grier planned to tank the season – and his roster moves this off-season certainly suggest that’s true – the plan is working marvellously. This San Jose team could be buried by December, and that’s got to be painful for Sharks fans who’ve been suffering greatly in recent years. But the pain of a rebuilding season subsides significantly if a team lands the No. 1 overall pick in the next draft, and Grier undoubtedly is looking at NCAA phenom Macklin Celebrini as the potential savior of his franchise.
There’s no guarantee San Jose will land the top pick, but by being this bad, Grier is guaranteeing himself a pick in the top five of the draft and the best odds at picking first. That will make the pain worth it.
However, how do veterans and Sharks cornerstone forwards Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl feel about this season? Couture is signed through 2026-27, while Hertl is under contract until 2029-30. Surely, they don’t want to be part of the rebuild, right?
We expect veterans to want out of long-term rebuilds, and we’ve already seen that in San Jose with the trading of star blueliner Erik Karlsson. The Penguins aren’t doing much better right now, but nobody faulted Karlsson for wanting to go to a more competitive team. Couture and Hertl can make any choice they plead, but it does seem curious they’d want to crawl through this stretch of franchise misery for the next few years.
The Sharks do have some solid building blocks for the future – most notably, 2023 first-rounder and Boston College star forward Will Smith. But it sure seems like Grier is going full scorched-earth with his turnover of San Jose’s roster, and as he peels off veterans between today and the trade deadline, he’s assuring himself of a record just as abysmal as the Sharks’ record is now.
San Jose fans have a long 72 games left to endure. There will be signs of life from this Sharks group, but they’ll be faint signs, and there will be many more losses than wins. That’s just where they are in their competitive cycle, and they will probably be better next year, mostly because they can’t be any worse. The Sharks are truly horrendous, and they’re locked into that state until further notice.
