Sharks

This is the Sharks hub. Coverage here is early and honest about it: the South Bay has been hard to watch for a while, and this blog is not going to pretend a rebuild is further along than it is.

The reason to pay attention now has a name. Macklin Celebrini is why the rebuild finally has a pulse, and that piece is the place to start. As the season gets going, game coverage and columns will land here; the league page is Bay Area NHL, and the wider regional story is in the Bay Area hub.

Six pages carry the season and they get updated as it moves: the schedule and season hub, opening night is 1 October against Florida at SAP Center; the roster and depth chart, including the rebuilt blue line and the goaltending number that decides the year; Macklin Celebrini’s records and contract, 115 points, Joe Thornton’s franchise record gone, and the biggest annual salary in the NHL; and thirty-five years without a Stanley Cup, which is the context for all of it. Two reference pages sit underneath those: the complete playoff history, every postseason run year by year, and when the Sharks were founded, which is a stranger story than the date suggests.

Last season ended 39-35-8-86 points, a 34-point improvement, and a seventh straight year out of the playoffs. Where the Sharks sit in the wider regional picture is on the Bay Area championship ledger, where their entry is a zero.