Sharks Gameday: Remembering the 2015-16 San Jose Sharks

Friends, loved ones, Kings fans feverishly googling Chris Paul in one browser tab while completing a purchase of Clippers gear in another. We are gathered here today to mourn the tragic passing of a team that left us far too soon: the 2015-16 San Jose Sharks.

"But wait," you might interject although it is rude to do so in the middle of a funeral. "Aren’t the Sharks currently up two games to none in their first-round series against the Kings? Also what idiot let you write another post on a SB Nation blog, let alone a eulogy? I thought you were dead?"

The answers to those questions are as follows: technically yes, the idiot named Jer, and I thought I was dead too when I locked myself in my ex-girlfriend’s 1999 Honda Civic for seven months in a spectacularly miscalculated bid to win her back. But I survived on a diet of old Egg McMuffin wrappers and my own tears.

Unfortunately, the Sharks will not be as lucky as I was. Now that they have taken a seemingly insurmountable lead over Los Angeles after winning both opening games at Staples Center, it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crumbling down like Martin Havlat’s pelvic floor. So while Game 3 will be played tonight in San Jose, this series for all intents and purposes is as over as my relationship with Nicole. All that is left to be determined is whether Anaheim or Nashville will play the role of her handsome, more successful new boyfriend Seth.

That’s why now is as good a time as any to eulogize this soon-to-be-eliminated Sharks team. Featuring a roster filled with clearly made up names like Joonas Donskoi, Melker Karlsson and Martin Jones, it shouldn’t surprise anyone this gang of fictional Tolkien characters built up an illusory series lead that they will promptly choke away. And just as with the franchise’s slew of previous playoff disappointments, the culprit will once again prove to be terrible goaltending a series of unfortunate injuries legendary choker Joe Thornton.

No less a hockey analysis luminary than Bill Simmons has already pinpointed the big bearded non-leader as the cause of the Sharks’ inevitable defeat in this series. Thank you, Bill. If the analysis on your new website is anywhere near this insightful, I assure you I and thirteen other people will be following along closely, more than tripling the readership you had at Grantland.

Woke hockey men like Simmons and Kevin Paul Dupont see through "facts" like Thornton’s 28^th all-time career point total and his identical point-per-game rate over his Sharks playoff career to Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Toews. They know that the Sharks’ well-below-average postseason goaltending and understaffed bluelines throughout the Thornton era are directly attributable to the chronic public masturbator himself. Thornton should have retired two years ago but his career will certainly be over when the Sharks proceed to blow their current series lead.

Let’s move from the players on the Sharks bench to the man behind it, Peter DeBoer, who was hired to replace Todd McLellan last summer despite the most significant line item on his resume being a crushing loss to the Los Angeles Kings on hockey’s biggest stage. If that doesn’t prove the Sharks’ entire existence is just one big cosmic joke with this upcoming series loss set to be another rousing punchline, nothing will. DeBoer, like his players, has valuable experience losing a playoff series to the Kings in heartbreaking fashion and will capably lead his troops to do what they were born to do over the next week and change.

At this point all that’s left to do for Sharks fans is to enjoy the final few games of Patrick Marleau’s San Jose career before he demands a trade to Dallas in order to be closer to his twin brother Ted Cruz. Congratulations to the Los Angeles Kings on their impending series and Stanley Cup victories. As perhaps the most morally upstanding team in all of professional sports, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving franchise.

(Ed. Note: This had better fucking work. Go Sharks.)

Gameday

Los Angeles Kings @ San Jose Sharks

Monday, April 18, 2016, 7:30PM PDT

NBCSN, CBC, CSN California, Prime Ticket

Game 3, Western Conference Quarterfinals, Sharks Lead 2-0

Prediction

Sharks lose, 6-9.