Blades of Teal
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Killer Instinct: Hasso Plattner Should Sell Sharks

By Felix Chow

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Yesterday evening, as you all know, San Jose Sharks’ owner Hasso Plattner issued a statement to fans basically saying that he acknowledges the disappointment of the fans for not making the playoffs, however Doug Wilson will still stay in place as general manager of the organization.

Not surprisingly, the highly vague statement resulted in an outcry from pretty much the entire fan base, including myself.

Really, it’s salt in the wound after everything this team and Wilson has put us through last season. From the inconsistent efforts out on the ice, to the lineup decisions, etc. I mean, the list can go on and on.

And here is Plattner probably sitting God-knows-where in his office chair nodding at everything Wilson says like a bobblehead, most likely without even knowing how hockey even works. For this reason I — along with almost every Sharks fan on Twitter — think he should sell the team, and I use the term “should” loosely, because we all know he won’t.

It’s an absolute disgrace to the organization and what it once stood for as a model of “consistency and success.” You have a guy who’s basically signed off with Wilson on everything that ranged from stripping the ‘C’ off Joe Thornton and giving him, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau, and Marc-Eduoard Vlasic the ‘A.’

He watched Wilson pretty much reignite the whole captaincy issue at the worst possible time when the Sharks were trying to fight for a playoff spot. And he signed off on Todd McLellan’s parting along with former assistant coaches Jim Johnson and Jay Woodcroft’s and video coordinator Brett Heimlich’s firing.

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Now, I get it. Wilson’s plan all along was to get rid of the coaches because they needed a rebuild from coaches to the players. It was obvious from the get-go why McLellan would’ve wanted out anyway. It wasn’t that his message wasn’t getting through to the players. Hell, the message most likely wasn’t even to the players specifically.

Rumors throughout the season indicated that the former head coach and Wilson weren’t seeing eye to eye, and hell, Wilson was even overstepping his boundaries as general manager. I was reading The Hockey Writer’s Andrew Bensch’s article after McLellan opted out as a free agent, and he made some very good and interesting points (and fittingly headed that section as “McLellan Wasn’t Allowed To Do His Job”).

There were rumors that McLellan hadn’t agreed with the move to put Brent Burns back on D at all, which is understandable. His stats and on-ice play indicated that Burns was inept at playing a really solid defensive game. I know the Sharks still lack offensive scoring depth regardless, but that’s where Burns excels, just firing at will and actually producing shots on net and goals for the team.

I’m sure McLellan also didn’t necessarily agree with stripping Thornton of the captaincy. Hell, captain or not, Jumbo Joe’s proven he’s still got a lot left in the tank. Sure, he’s not getting younger, and as much as it pains me to say it, he might actually have to go if that’s what gets the Sharks to the Stanley Cup Finals.

But there’s no doubt that Thornton’s a Hall of Famer. His stats and play out on the ice show it. And he’s even more capable of handling himself as a player and person. He did what he should’ve done even if it probably wasn’t at the right time when Wilson called him out, but he stood up for himself. His teammates still acknowledge him as an important part of the group, a leader.

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I could go on and on about where Wilson and McLellan differed in opinion, and that further proves the fact that Wilson is not capable of being Sharks GM and should’ve been fired, which further proves my point, that Plattner is clearly incapable of being in the hockey business and the owner of the Sharks. He couldn’t take that extra step to, for one, actually attend a game and two (what I was really getting at), fire Wilson.

But on that aspect of going to games, while I’m already on it… I mean, out of all the home games he could’ve and should’ve gone to this past season, where the hell was he? Where the hell was he when the Sharks weren’t winning a single home game at SAP Center during the month of February?

Oh, right. According to Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News, Plattner had attended the Stadium Series game. Also according to Purdy, when he wrote about Plattner watching the NHL Stadium Series at Levi’s Stadium, he said Plattner “makes infrequent public comments” and lived in Germany much of the year. The Sharks needed an added voice throughout the whole mess that was the 2014-15 season and he barely showed up.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the league, teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs and hell, even the Edmonton Oilers actually did something today by hiring former Boston Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli as their General Manager and President of Hockey Operations, possibly in an attempt to shake up their management some.

In Toronto, Team President Brendan Shanahan recently started cleaning the house at the start of the postseason, just days before McLellan parted ways with the Sharks. Former GM David Nonis, gone. Interim head coach Peter Horachek, gone. Former assistant coaches, gone. Former goalie coach, out. Shanahan even fired the directors of both scouting and player development, along with a many scouts!

Of course, here in San Jose, Wilson’s not going anywhere. Plattner’s also staying put. There’ve already been reports of the Sharks getting permission to interview former Anaheim Ducks‘ and Toronto Maple Leafs‘ head coach Randy Carlyle for the head coaching job. Hockey Night in Canada’s Elliotte Friedman first broke the news with this tweet:

I’m afraid the Sharks are only going downhill from here, unless Wilson’s plan has been working all along and Team Teal will somehow a) make the playoffs, b) punch their ticket to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in franchise history, and c) y’know… win their first championship.

But that’s a long shot. As one of my friends and current staff writer for Pucks of a Feather, Jason Byun, told me earlier this morning via text: “with Kevin Lowe of the Oilers stepping down, the Sharks are in prime position to take the label of organizational ineptitude in the West,” basically implying the Sharks are becoming the pre-2016 version of the Edmonton Oilers.

Ouch. But it’s true, which is why as long as Plattner still owns the Sharks and Wilson is still sitting in his chair smiling with the title of General Manager above his head, this organization can and will only spiral in one direction: downwards.

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