The San Jose Sharks fired head coach Peter DeBoer in an attempt to salvage their season, but the problems likely won’t stop there.
In hockey, there is a truism that floats around every time a head coach is fired. It’s that hockey teams — and head coaches by extension — are only as good as their goaltenders. The San Jose Sharks are the latest NHL team to come to terms with that adage, as the team fired head coach Peter DeBoer on Wednesday night.
The Sharks, frankly, have been a mess this season. San Jose lost nine of their first 13 games to start their 2019-20 campaign, rebounded to win 11 of their next 13 contests, then have lost five straight as their record sits at 15-16-2 on the year. Their 33 game season thus far has been a roller coaster, with the team currently barreling downhill towards the bottom of the Pacific Division.
With 32 points in 33 games, the Sharks sit sixth in the Pacific Division and are five points out of a wild card spot in the Western Conference. The team had rebounded back into a playoff spot in November, but even then it was hard to see the Sharks sustaining their good fortune.
San Jose’s goaltending is, obviously, a major factor in the team’s current position in the bottom of the Pacific. Martin Jones and Aaron Dell hold a combined .891 save percentage this season, a metric that is the fourth-worst in the entire NHL. The Sharks have allowed 114 goals against the season, the NHL’s second highest, and have a goal differential of minus-25, the league’s third-worst.
Dell as a backup has underperformed with a .893 save percentage this year, but the real blame falls on Jones as the team’s starter. This season, Jones has a .891 save percentage in 26 games played and has allowed four or more goals in a game 11 times. Last year, Jones posted a .896 save percentage in 62 games and yet made it to the Western Conference Finals in spite of poor netminding.
Jones is a career .910 save percentage goaltender and is an average netminder at best, but it’s clear something is wrong with him or his confidence.
Though the blame — and the axe — has fallen on DeBoer for his team’s goaltending woes, general manager Doug Wilson should not escape blame here either. San Jose’s goaltending was the team’s biggest question mark coming into the season, and has been a topic of conversation for most of 2019. Wilson failed to address the Sharks’ goaltending problems by adding either a better backup or scouring the market for a possible trade or free agent to help or replace Jones, and the team has since paid the price.
Goaltending, however, isn’t the only reason the Sharks have been performing poorly this season. San Jose has an expected goals-for rate per 60 minutes of play of 2.19 at 5-on-5 that ranks 12th worst in the NHL, according to Natural Stat Trick. The team also employs two thirds of the NHL’s over-40 crowd in Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, a pair that has a combined 22 points on the season.
Offensively, the Sharks have playmakers and goal-scorers in Logan Couture, Evander Kane and Tomas Hertl, but the team has not looked like a cohesive unit all season. During their five-game losing streak, the Sharks have been outscored 23-7 in an embarrassing effort all around.
Historically, DeBoer is not a bad NHL head coach. After his time in San Jose, DeBoer’s record with the Sharks stands at 198-129-34 across four seasons and change, taking San Jose to the postseason four times with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2016. The Sharks never finished lower than third in the Pacific when DeBoer was head coach of the team, a testament to not only the team’s roster composition but to his style of coaching.
However, it’s clear someone had to take the fall this year for the Sharks’ failings. San Jose sits at a 19 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to MoneyPuck, and are on the outside looking in at a surprisingly strong Pacific Division. Interim head coach Bob Boughner will have his work cut out for him if he wants to keep the Sharks from missing the playoffs for the first time since the 2014–15 season.
The road will be a tough one, though. DeBoer was not the cause of the Sharks’ problems this season, only a symptom of it. San Jose will have to do some major roster re-tooling on the fly if they want to make the postseason this year, but even then this team no doubt needs a shakeup to get back to being a dominant playoff force.