Looking back on Joe Thornton’s 24-year NHL career, time has given everyone some valuable perspective.
In the middle of it, particularly when he was at the height of his powers with the San Jose Sharks, fans could marvel at his skill, the fluidity and verve with which he played along with his extraordinary creativity and competitiveness. He was an artist, with a nasty streak.
One could argue that during the 2000s, Thornton was the best player in the NHL on a year-in and year-out basis, perhaps even after 2005 when Sidney Crosby first came into the league. Certainly, no one amassed more points (886) that decade than Joe.
His election to the Hockey Hall of Fame – after he becomes eligible in three years – is a given.
But the caveat with Thornton, at least in some people’s minds, was he never won a Stanley Cup. Year after year, the Boston Bruins, the Sharks, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Florida Panthers all had terrific regular seasons only to fall short of winning 16 games once the postseason began.
On Nov. 1, 2011, the day after Thornton said the Sharks shouldn’t have lost to a “soft” Rangers team, then-New York coach John Tortorella fired back, saying, “Joe’s a heck of a player, but here’s a player popping off about our team, and Joe hasn’t won a (expletive) thing in this league. He could go down as a player, being one of the better players in our league never to win anything.”
But narrowing Thornton’s career down to just one aspect misses the broader picture, especially when it comes to his impact in San Jose.
The Sharks were a good team in the mid-2000s but things might have started to become a bit stale in the first two months of the 2005-2006 season, as San Jose’s record dipped to 8-12-4 after a 10-game losing streak. By acquiring Thornton from the Bruins on Nov. 30, 2005, in one of the more lopsided trades of the decade, former Sharks general manager Doug Wilson helped set the franchise up for a decade-plus run of success on and off the ice.
From Dec. 1, 2005, to March 12, 2020, no NHL team had a greater points percentage than the Sharks’ mark of .622. After the trade, San Jose would go on to make the playoffs in 13 of the next 14 years, growing the team’s profile across the league. They always had a seat at the table, and always gave themselves a chance.
Starting with Thornton’s first full season in San Jose in 2006-2007, average attendance for home games dipped below 17,000 just once in 14 years, including a sellout streak that lasted 205 games — 177 regular season and 28 in the playoffs — from Dec. 2009 to Oct. 2014.
“He changed the franchise,” Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic said. “(The arena) was packed when I came in 2006 and Joe was a big deal. We had other big players as well, but I think Joe turned it around.”
Those look like the Sharks’ salad days right now.
The Sharks are set to miss the playoffs for a fifth straight year and are well on their way to finishing with less than 20 wins for just the third time in a non-work stoppage season. The franchise record for fewest wins in one full year is 11, a low established in 1992-1993.
So far this season, in four home games, the Sharks’ average announced attendance is 14,437, or 82.8 percent of capacity, the third-lowest figure in the league.
Tomas Hertl is the Sharks’ No. 1 center right now, and the team’s leading point producer. But even he will tell you that he’s not at Thornton’s Hall of Fame level.
So, who knows when the Sharks will again have a No. 1 center like Thornton? Does Will Smith, drafted fourth overall by the Sharks in June, have that capability? Or will whoever the Sharks use their first pick on next year, such as Macklin Celebrini if the team has some lottery luck, be of Thornton’s ilk?
That can’t be ruled out, but it’s hardly a guarantee.
After all, no one even knows when the Sharks are going to be able to make the playoffs again.
Let’s be honest: Sharks fans may have taken all of that for granted during the Thornton era.
The Sharks came close to winning a Stanley Cup in 2016 when they captured the Western Conference for the first time and came within two victories of winning it all. The next year, the Sharks might have been able to make another deep run had Thornton, then 37, not suffered ACL and MCL tears in his left knee. Thornton, remarkably, still played four playoff games but the Sharks lost in the first round to Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers.
In the 2019 playoffs, who knows what would have happened with the Sharks had Erik Karlsson stayed healthy, and if Joe Pavelski and Hertl didn’t get injured in the Western Conference final?
In some other playoff years, Thornton and the Sharks just lost to a better team.
None of which should diminish what Thornton did for the Sharks, the NHL, and the city of San Jose.
Who knows when the organization will have a player like him again?
“Obviously he came here and brought the San Jose Sharks organization to another level, allowed us to compete for Stanley Cups year in and year out,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “If you’re going to have success, you’ve got to have personalities in the locker room and there wasn’t a bigger personality in the National Hockey League and Joe, and that continues to be true to this day.”
