McLellan, Sharks decide to part ways
SAN JOSE, CALIF.— After seven seasons of great regular-season success and playoff disappointments, coach Todd McLellan and the San Jose Sharks decided it was time for a change. The Sharks announced Monday they had agreed to part ways with the winningest coach in franchise history after the team missed the playoffs for the first time since 2003.
With the Sharks committed to a youth movement and McLellan having just one year remaining on his contract, the two sides agreed it was time to make a change.
“This team is clearly in a rebuild,” McLellan said. “I felt with some of the answers I got that it was time.”
And his next stop could be with the Maple Leafs, who are looking for a new head coach and McLellan is rumoured to be one of the candidates they are targetting.
McLellan had a 311-163-66 regularseason record with the Sharks, the third-best in the league since he took over before the 2008-09 season. But San Jose finished12th out of14 teams in the Western Conference this season and missed the post-season, leading to the change.
“I want to thank Todd and his staff for their years of service to the San Jose Sharks organization,” general manager Doug Wilson said.
McLellan, who won a Stanley Cup as an assistant in Detroit, got off to a successful start in his tenure in San Jose, winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the top regular-season team in 2009. But the Sharks fell in the first round of the playoffs to Anaheim in another post-season disappointment for a franchise full of them.
The Sharks then made back-toback trips to the conference finals the next two seasons, but won one playoff series in McLellan’s final four seasons.
“There were a lot of good things we did here,” McLellan said. “We put up like six or seven banners in the building. We’re really proud of that.”
Last season’s loss was the most devastating. San Jose took a 3-0 series lead over rival Los Angeles only to lose the final four games, becoming just the fourth NHL team to blow such a lead.
McLellan questioned after the series whether his message was still getting through to the players.
Wilson talked about the need to take a step backward with a youth movement and new leadership.
Those comments rankled some of the players. Joe Thornton was stripped of his captaincy and then disagreed at the start of training camp with Wilson’s assessment that the Sharks were a “tomorrow team.”
That tension only grew as the season went on and boiled over when Wilson told season-ticket holders Thornton had a tendency to lash out at people in stressful situations. Thornton responded that his GM should “shut his mouth” and “stop lying.”