With his recent retirement, Joe Thornton's San Jose Sharks legacy can start right after he was acquired.

So there’s some delicious irony in this particular cover, which features a gangster Joe Thornton as one of the NHL’s ‘Untouchables.’ That was, of course, until the Boston Bruins wound up trading ‘Jumbo’ to the San Jose Sharks just two years later. But you know who wasn’t surprised? Thornton himself, in this very issue. When he was asked about the term ‘untouchable,’ the big center was prescient: “The word doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

Thornton cited his idol, Wayne Gretzky, getting traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles, something that shocked the nine-year-old fan at the time. “I was devastated,” Thornton recalled. “My world kind of revolved around the Oilers.”

Thornton’s move may not have been as earth-shattering as Gretzky’s, but it was still massive. The fact that Thornton won the Hart and Art Ross Trophies the very same season he was traded for Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau made things look ugly for the Bruins.

THN Archive is an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 stories for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com

Make sure you bookmark THN's San Jose Sharks site for the latest news, exclusive interviews, breakdowns, and so much more.

David Quinn Talks About the Sharks' Struggles

Erik Karlsson Returns to San Jose

Quinn, Hertl, & Sturm Give Their Reactions To Sharks 10-1 Loss to Canucks

Quinn Hughes' 5-Point Night Sinks Sharks; Canucks Dominate 10-1

• undefined