The much anticipated news of the off-season for San Jose Sharks fans has finally been announced. As teams head into training camp, San Jose has decided to go without a Captain and Alternate Captain, therefore stripping the ‘C’ and ‘A’ off of Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau respectively.
All of this comes to us with no surprise, though. For the past few months after the disastrous first round playoff collapse against the Los Angeles Kings, among the wild speculation of San Jose’s curious off-season, was if the Sharks would go with or without “new” players wearing the C or A on their sweaters. Sharks GM Doug Wilson had noted before that “a change in culture” was necessary, more specifically a “rebuild“, if the Sharks were planning on winning the Stanley Cup in it’s future. What does that change entail? Namely the change in leadership and chemistry in the locker room. That change in leadership was echoed by head coach Todd McLellan when he spoke with NHL.com’s Dan Rosen earlier this month.
"“Those will be some decisions that we’ll make as training camp approaches, as players get back into San Jose and settle in. We’ll sit with them and talk about that situation. I think we talked about this at the draft, if there was a new rule that came into the League and there weren’t any ‘C’s and ‘A’s, would there be a leadership group that took care of the team and would the followers step in and contribute when they needed to contribute? I believe so. So, with that in mind we’ll see what we do as move forward.”"
Could this move potentially help motivate everyone on the team to step their game up when it matters most like what McLellan stated? Maybe. We’ll just have to see for ourselves.