Before I get really into my detailed takedowns of Mike Grier and Ryan Warsofsky, I’ll set the table with a little bit of my background. I was eleven years old when the San Jose Sharks came into existence, and my dad was really stoked that San Jose was getting a team. He had been into the Seals back when they were a thing. Supposedly, my aunt dated one of their goalies for a while as well. We attended the first preseason game the team ever played, first time on home ice, at the Cow Palace. And I was immediately hooked and was a top 0.01% fan of the team from then until somewhere in the early-2000s, and then just a real big fan and that tapering off until I gave up on the team after blowing the 3-0 series lead in 2014.
I was pretty much just not a hockey fan at all after that and took up other pursuits.
Fast forward to the Sharks drafting Macklin Celebrini, and my dad gets a phone call from the Sharks. For some reason, he listens to this voice mail and he and then we ended up thinking the team was looking for the family company to advertise with them. He asks me to call the guy back, but it turns out to just be someone selling season tickets. We had had tickets when I was in high school and my dad’s number didn’t change and the team put on a press after the Celebrini draft.
Yadda yadda yadda, I bought a pair of seats. My reason being that I had developed some hermit-like qualities during Covid and also wasn’t really breaking out of them too well post-Covid. And so this would give me something to do, somewhere to be, sometimes, and get back to being out and about. I didn’t even plan to be a Sharks fan again. I was just gonna see some good hockey. I got seats toward the end the visiting team attacks in the first and third periods not just because they are cheaper, but because I thought I’d like to just see the most of stars on other teams passing through town.
But Celebrini was awesome, of course, and the team was quite fun in that rookie season of his, even if not very good. And I got hooked pretty hard there for that year. Lots of merch, extra Sharks365 event attendance, etc.
I did, however, have one major gripe: that I had to watch Barclay Goodrow and Ty Dellandrea play hockey.
Going into last season, I believe my expectation was reasonable. This would be that Dellandrea would be off the team. I didn’t expect anything to be done about Goodrow then, with two years left on his contract. I’d have welcomed his being jettisoned as well, but I didn’t expect it. I could accept that. But the team brought in some cheap forward depth in the offseason with the likes of Adam Gaudette and Philip Kurashev. And they had Michael Misa coming in for his rookie season. It would be easy to tell Dellandrea to pack his bags.
As training camp went on, it became increasingly clear that I was hosed. The GM and coach wanted to keep him due to some combination of their overall preference for shitty players and his friendship with Celebrini and Will Smith. So when Dellandrea was credited with six hits in a preseason game against the Ducks, that became a big talking point as to why he would be playing in San Jose again, despite being absolutely atrocious.
I said then that if they actually had Dellandrea on the team when the season started, we’d know the administration were not serious people.
Nothing that’s happened since makes me feel any differently.
