2019/20 NHL Season

Oh, believe me, I'm on board with today's moves. The words, "you guys could be next" should be mentioned during the subsequent team meeting.

Then, the same words should be spoken to upper management at their next meeting.

DW should be splitting a U-Haul with Pete to clean out their offices. I'm disappointed with ownership that this is not a reality.

One last gasp for Doug Wilson's career in San Jose. The end of the line is approaching

Time to update the status

I thought Pete did a wonderful job previous seasons, but his influence/message just plain old ran out and it was time to move on. I guarantee he finds another job this season(if he wants it). With all the controversy surrounding so many coaches, they are becoming a hot commodity. I guess we will see what Boogey can do, and if they need to hire someone else over the summer. Granted Boogey was the scape goat for Florida. And I don't think it coincidence he comes back and the Sharks are all of a sudden top penalty kill in the league.

SAN JOSE - San Jose Sharks (@sanjosesharks) General Manager Doug Wilson today announced that the team has made several changes to the Sharks coaching staff, including naming Bob Boughner as the team's interim head coach. Also joining the Sharks coaching staff are Associate Coach Roy Sommer, Assistant Coach Mike Ricci and Goaltending Coach Evgeni Nabokov. Dan Darrow will remain in his current role of assistant coach, video.

In related moves, Peter DeBoer, Steve Spott, Dave Barr and Johan Hedberg have been relieved of their duties.

"When you have had a level of past success, change is never easy, but we feel this team is capable of much more than we have shown thus far and that a new voice is needed," said Wilson. "As a team and as individuals, our play has not met expectations this year and our level of consistency has not been where it needs to be. This group of individuals who will lead our team moving forward are very familiar with our players, and we think this change can provide our group with a fresh start.

"Under the leadership of Pete, along with Steve, Dave and Johan, our franchise accomplished some great things, culminating in reaching the 2016 Stanley Cup Final. We want to thank them for their contributions to our organization's success over the last four years."

Boughner re-joined the Sharks prior to the start of the 2019-20 season as an assistant coach. From 2017-2019, he served as the head coach of the Florida Panthers, where he posted an 80-62-22 record, missing a playoff berth in 2017-18 by one point.

He originally joined the Sharks coaching staff in 2015, including helping lead the team to their first Stanley Cup Final berth in 2016. Under Boughner, Brent Burns (@burnzie88) was named a finalist for the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the NHL's best defenseman in 2016 and won the award in 2017, when he also finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting as the NHL's Most Valuable Player.

Boughner also served as an assistant coach with the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2010-11.

He led the Windsor Spitfires to consecutive Memorial Cup and OHL Championships during the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons. He also earned consecutive CHL and OHL Coach of the Year awards in the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009, becoming the first head coach in CHL history to win a Memorial Cup and the CHL Coach of the Year award twice.

A ten-year NHL veteran defenseman, Boughner appeared in 630 NHL games with Colorado, Carolina, Calgary, Pittsburgh, Nashville and Buffalo, amassing 72 points (15 goals, 57 assists) and 1,382 penalty minutes.

Sommer, most recently the head coach of the San Jose Barracuda (@sjbaracuda), is the all-time leader in games coached and wins in the history of the American Hockey League, posting a 772-664-48-153 (W-L-T-OTL/SOL) record. Each of those wins has come behind the bench of San Jose's AHL affiliate (Kentucky 1998-01, Cleveland 2001-06, Worcester 2006-15, San Jose 2015-19). He also served as an assistant coach with the Sharks during the 1997-98 season under Darryl Sutter.

In his time as head coach in the AHL, Sommer has promoted more than 130 players to the National Hockey League.

Since the Sharks AHL franchise relocated to San Jose in 2015, the Barracuda have made the playoffs in each of their four seasons, including an appearance in the Western Conference Final in 2017. During the Sharks 2019 Western Conference Final season, the team dressed 19 players over the course of the year that developed under Sommer's tutelage in the American Hockey League.

Nabokov, the Sharks franchise leader in nearly every historical goaltending category including games played (563), wins (293) and shutouts (50), has served as a scout and goaltending development coach for the past five seasons, where he has worked with the goaltending prospects on the Barracuda in the development system. In each of the last three seasons, the Barracuda have had a goaltender selected to the AHL All-Star Game under the tutelage of Nabokov (2017-Troy Grosenick; 2018-Antoine Bibeau; 2019-Josef Korenar).

Nabokov spent ten seasons with the Sharks and 14 years total in the NHL, with the Sharks, NY Islanders and Tampa Bay. He ranks T-20th on the NHL's all-time list in wins (353) and 18th in shutouts (59).

Ricci, who played in 529 games with the Sharks from 1997-2004, has spent the last 12 seasons as development coach with the organization, working closely with the forwards on the Sharks and the Barracuda rosters. His areas of focus included face-off techniques, individual skill development and team systems integration.

The 16-year NHL veteran posted 605 points (243 goals, 362 assists) in 1,099 games with Philadelphia, Colorado, San Jose and Phoenix. He won a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 1996.

New ‘interim’ head coach. Is fucking Babcock on his way to San Jose? I don’t think hasso cares about a couple million dollars difference if he gets a good pitch.

Boughner has a lot to prove and an ahl coaching staff to lend a hand. Nabokov is the only one that can’t possibly be any worse than the last guy.

Doug Wilson...like always. 

Thanks Pete for the run to the finals. I will never forget that.

Sharks owner Hasso Plattner couldn’t fire the entire team, so he fired head coach Pete DeBoer on Wednesday.



After five straight losses and amid a season where expectations were high, talent was ample, and disappointment has far outweighed success, the move was necessary.

The Sharks problems aren’t completely tied to DeBoer, who coached the team for four-plus seasons — far from it — but he was not providing any solutions to the issues this team — which still fancies itself a Stanley Cup contender — was facing, so he needed to be the first to go.



The Sharks real issue is that they have the worst goaltending tandem in the NHL in Martin Jones and Aaron Dell. Corsica’s advanced player rankings have Dell as the worst goalie in the NHL — 66 of 66. Jones is No. 64.

In turn, the Sharks have allowed the second-most goals in the league and have the third-worst goal differential in the NHL.



Firing DeBoer isn’t going to change that. The team is probably going to let in 250 goals this season no matter what.

But DeBoer was a defense-first coach whose defense wasn’t executing. Blame injuries or absent/offensive-minded defensemen all you want, but the structure of the team’s defense has been shambolic all season.



And worse yet, DeBoer wasn’t doing was helping the Sharks realize their offensive potential.



DeBoer believed in puck possession — that the best defense is not letting the other team have it. He wanted the Sharks to play a controlled, physical game in a league that is increasingly about speed and skill.

That led to conflicted feelings and conflicted play from two of this era’s best offensive defensemen — Erik Karlsson and Brent Burns — who have not been anything close to forces this year (though Karlsson has been better as of late).



It led to offensive play that was compressed and oftentimes wrought — overly reliant on power-play opportunities to score. (The Sharks have converted on one of their last 30 power plays)



The truth is that you can’t play that style of hockey when you’re giving up 10 goals for every three games you play.



And when there’s no system that can even shave two, three, four goals off that weekly total, so all you can do is try to fight fire with fire.



Given the Sharks’ salary cap situation (it’s dire, with less than $340,000 in projected space, per CapFriendly), there’s almost no chance this team will be able to make any move for new goalies. General manager Doug Wilson already made its desperation skater signing too, bringing back Patrick Marleau earlier this season. There’s no young hot-shot prospect on the horizon or injured player that can come back and spark something special.



Yes, the players that have underperformed all season are the players the Sharks are going to have to use the rest of the season.

Was this roster ever good enough to win the Cup? Probably not. It certainly has high-end talent, but the pieces are yet to fit together.



Will they ever? That’s for new coach Bob Boughner to figure out. It’s clear that DeBoer had run out of ideas.



Boughner was fired as the Florida Panthers’ head coach last season in large part because he couldn’t get his team to overcome back goaltending and inconsistent play from defensemen, so he should fit right in. All those lessons that he learned after his Florida ouster? He’ll get to implement them right away.



One can only hope that he does, because in Florida, he wasn’t exactly a hockey radical — and that’s what San Jose needs right now.



Perhaps Boughner will be game to throw caution to the wind, to take off the reins on Karlsson, Burns, and wingers like Evander Kane and Timo Meier, and let the team play the kind of fast-paced, free-wheeling hockey that defines this day-and-age. A coach that is ok with winning games 6-4 and 7-5.



There’s no system, no coaching ideas, that can fix what really ails the Sharks — Jones and Dell’s play — but trying to cover it up only made it their play worse and more obvious.



And at a certain point, it becomes pragmatic to ignore your weaknesses and go all the way in on your strength.



The Sharks are well past that point.

Reinhart, Mittelstadt, Bogosian and Ullmark for Karlsson and Dell?

Posted the video of a Wilson-Chara last night. Note the difference here. People love to give Wilson crap for the way he plays but for all the borderline and over-the-line stuff he does he answers the bell and fights Chara. Contrast that with Maroon who drops the gloves, hangs on for dear life, throws some punches that couldn’t have landed at all. It’s the difference between a guy who is fighting (Wilson) and a guy who just wants it to look like he’s fighting without actually fighting (Maroon) and it is all too common nowadays. Not trying to knock Maroon, he’s a useful player and can handle himself but he doesn’t have that edge, that killer instinct, that truest toughness. That is a large part of why Wilson changes games and changes the way people play. There is a lot of value in that and no matter how many times Wilson crosses the line I can always respect that about him.