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SAN JOSE’S GROW OP Jun 7, 2010– Vol. 63, Issue 26 - Eric Duhatschek

Doug Wilson tied his future to the San Jose Sharks way back in September of 1991. That’s when he made an unexpected and bold decision to join an NHL expansion team, rather than stay on with the Chicago Blackhawks, the only organization he’d known, run in those days by ‘Iron’ Mike Keenan.

The NHL didn’t give the Sharks much help in those days. That year, writing in The Hockey News, I predicted that they might be hard-pressed to win 10 games their inaugural season. That February, at the All-Star Game in Chicago, GM Jack Ferreira spotted me at one of the galas and from a balcony called down: ‘Eric, we have 11 already.’ They’d finish with 17.

Next year, they had the year I thought they would in their first season and slipped to just 11 victories. Their 71 losses in what was then an 84-game season is still the most of all time.

But the one thing about the Sharks is that while they were lovable losers those first two years, they got competitive in a hurry. Before becoming playoff pushovers the past few years, they had a run in the mid-1990s in which they were the ones engineering all the upsets.

The Sharks were always forward-thinking – kooky sometimes, with that three-headed GM monster they employed before Wilson ascended to the top job – but willing to try different things, like bringing in Igor Larionov to instill a winning attitude in the team.

Above all, player development was a primary part of their modus operandi. The Sharks invested time and effort in the system; valued draft choices; and eventually were nicely poised heading out of the NHL lockout, with the one commodity that every team eventually learned they would need – homegrown talent.

WILSON HAS BEEN MOVING THE PIECES IN AND OUT, TRYING TO FIND A BALANCE

Now, not all of that talent is on display anymore as the Sharks advanced to the conference final for only the second time in six years, but you can draw a thread between virtually every player making a difference for the team and discover that he is either homegrown, or acquired in exchange for homegrown assets.

They made the trade for Dany Heatley because they had a couple of players drafted in the first round that Ottawa took in exchange – Milan Michalek and Jonathan Cheechoo. They made the trade for Joe Thornton because they could surrender two other first-rounders, Brad Stuart and Marco Sturm, in exchange. Just about everybody else in the core group – from Patrick Marleau and Evgeni Nabokov to Ryane Clowe and Joe Pavelski - was drafted by the Sharks, a lot of them in the nether regions of the draft.

Managing a team is not unlike piecing together a giant jigsaw puzzle.

In 2004, the last time the Sharks went as far as the conference final, Marleau and Nabokov were six years younger and just emerging as front-line NHL players. Vincent Damphousse was a pivotal scorer; Mike Ricci the shutdown center; and both Kyle McLaren and Scott Hannan provided important defensive minutes.

The Thornton trade came later; as did the one that brought in Dan Boyle; and what could have been a disaster for Wilson as a manager – trading Miikka Kiprusoff to Calgary for a second-round pick – was mitigated somewhat when the Sharks chose Marc-Edouard Vlasic with that selection.

There isn’t a sense that the Sharks have massively turned over their roster because of their continuing regular season excellence – an average of 108 points in each season since that first trip to the conference final.

But Wilson has been moving the pieces in and out, trying to find a balance between skill and grit, experience and enthusiasm, and that elusive intangible, ability to win when the pressure mounts.

Boyle and Rob Blake help there, two players who’d previously won before and were grafted on to the team, as parts it couldn’t develop internally.

Ultimately, if the Sharks find a way to do something special this spring, they’ll need to tip the cap to the success they’ve had plugging youngsters into the system and then seeing them grow and develop. If they don’t and fall short of the ultimate goal, they will receive the annual 40 lashes for their inability to win it all.

It’s curious how many NHL teams fail year after year and don’t attract nearly the same criticism and bile as the Sharks do, even as they consistently stay among the league’s elite.

Funny world sometimes, this business of pro sport, where the greatest sin of all seems to be being good, but maybe just not quite good enough. ■

Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

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