The trainer of the legendary thoroughbred mare Zenyatta was a man named John Shirreffs. John Shirreffs was a moron who was very lucky to have Zenyatta come through his barn, and now he’s a Hall of Fame trainer because one horse was too good for him to screw up.

The same thing might be getting underway with the San Jose Sharks, whose GM Mike Grier receives nothing but praise for his performance in rebuilding the roster, but whose only successful maneuvers have been obvious draft picks that anyone else in the world could have made. And the absurd value provided by the players selected in the draft that anyone in the world could have picked might well carry the Sharks to one or more Stanley Cups. But it will be because those guys dragged all the dead weight Grier saddles them with across the finish line.

Luckily, the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup, negating the inane comeback that would come from most hockey fans after I make the following observation: I took note in the aftermath of the Mikko Rantanen situation with Carolina, that GM Eric Tulsty said when asked if he regretted his trade for Rantanen, that his job was to acquire the twenty best hockey players in the world to play for the team, and until he managed to do that, he’d be trying to do that.

Mike Grier is not trying to do that. He wants to construct a roster in a certain way, with guys filling certain roles, and so far it appears his conception of such a balanced roster is that the team needs to have a balance between good and shitty players.

This attitude has led to the team giving regular playing time and their greatest public praise to Ty Dellandrea and Barclay Goodrow, two players that not a single other team in the league would let into their facilities, much less play hockey for them. It created a lust for Kiefer Sherwood. It spawned four years for Jacob Trouba when Ryan Shea cost Edmonton half the annual salary.

He and Ryan Warsofsky are consistency fetishists who will absolutely take a guy who sucks all the time to a guy who contributes some of the time and sucks some of the time. You’re Macklin Celebrini or you better be a useless grinder. Take it from Adam Gaudette and Pavol Regenda, you absolutely do not want to score too often.

Stenberg, Verhoeff, and Lin are an exciting trio today. Wait until the team starts teaching them how to be NHLers. They’ll either get boring fast or get the Quentin Musty treatment.

Well, Stenberg won’t get that. And that’s the real hope for Sharks fans. That there are enough guys that have fallen into Grier’s lap that he can’t fuck with and they’re strong enough to overcome the drag.