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Joe Thornton talked to several teams last summer when he made his first trip to the free-agent market before ultimately deciding to return to San Jose on a one-year deal.
This time there was never any doubt.
”Obviously there were some teams calling Cheap Harold Landry Jersey , but I told my agent/brother let’s keep it quiet this year, I want to go back to San Jose,” Thornton said Monday. ”Obviously talking to you guys at the end of the year that’s no secret. I feel this team is just getting better and better. … Our window is always open it seems in San Jose, and it’s a good feeling.”
Thornton signed a one-year, $5 million contract on his 39th birthday, taking a $3 million pay cut from the previous year to help make sure the Sharks have the room to add other top players. Thornton had been willing to take even less had John Tavares decided to take San Jose’s offer instead of signing a $77 million, seven-year deal with Toronto on Sunday.
But Thornton still believes strongly in the group that general manager Doug Wilson, coach Peter DeBoer and owner Hasso Plattner have put together and feels the pieces are in place for that elusive Stanley Cup run.
”It would have been nice to get Johnny, but I think if you look at our team still, Doug and Hasso and Pete, they’ve allowed us to compete every year, and I think there’s no difference again this year,” Thornton said. ”We’re going to compete for a Cup. But yeah, I was going to be flexible and will always try to help out the franchise in that way.”
The Sharks also locked up restricted free agent forward Tomas Hertl with a $22.5 million, four-year deal on Monday that buys out the first two years of unrestricted free agency.
Hertl took on a bigger role last season after Thornton went down with a season-ending right knee injury Jan. 23. Thornton had torn the ACL and MCL in his left knee the previous season but said he’s ahead of where he was at this point last summer and expects to be 100 percent at the start of training camp.
Thornton started slowly last season while recovering from knee surgery but was back near his top form by the end of November. He had 11 goals and 15 assists in his final 28 games before the injury.
”I’ve never seen anybody train like this. You look at his birth certificate and it says a number there. But he’s childlike when it comes for his passion and love for the game Saquon Barkley Game Jersey ,” Wilson said. ”He’s had so much time now and was so close to playing that I t6hink he’ll come back way ahead of where he was last year.”
Thornton has been the face of the franchise in San Jose since arriving in 2005, helping the team reach three Western Conference finals and one trip the Stanley Cup Final in 2016.
He ranks 12th in NHL history with 1,030 assists and is 16th with 1,427 points. With seven more games, Thornton will become the 19th player to reach the 1,500-game mark for a career.
The 24-year-old Hertl is just coming into his own after being slowed by knee injuries early in his career. He had a career-high 22 goals to go along with 44 assists this past season and was strong on both ends of the ice.
Hertl was even better come playoff time with six goals and three assists in 10 games. He also won 57.7 percent of his faceoffs. The Sharks are counting on more of that kind of play in the future.
”I just think his best hockey is ahead of him,” Wilson said. ”He truly wants to be a great player. Watching him in the playoffs this year, I think everybody saw him take that step that not only we expected but he expected of himself.”
The Sharks still have one more restricted free agent to sign in forward Chris Tierney.
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AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this story
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As checkered playoff histories go, the Washington Capitals haven’t been around nearly as long as some NHL teams. The track record was still long and sad.
There was Pat Lafontaine of the Islanders beating them in the four-overtime ”Easter Epic” back in 1987. Esa Tikkanen missing a wide-open net in the Stanley Cup Final loss to Detroit in 1998.
Heck, losing nine of 11 postseason meetings against the Pittsburgh Penguins alone is filled to the brim with gut-wrenching letdowns.
The puck finally bounced the right way for the Capitals, who built a 3-1 lead in the Final against Vegas after some rare postseason fortune and wrapped it up Thursday night in Game 5. Lars Eller’s double-overtime winner off his right skate kept his team out of a 3-0 hole in the first round. Then came a cathartic, six-game elimination of the Penguins behind a patchwork lineup full of rookies.
Against the Golden Knights, Braden Holtby made the stick save of a lifetime to lock up a Game 2 win and opponent James Neal clanked a shot off the post in Game 4, staring at as much net as Tikkanen had 20 years ago.
It’s as though all the bad breaks from the previous 42 seasons of Washington Capitals hockey are being erased – or at least somewhat forgotten – in a run that could deliver the franchise’s first title.
”It’s like the franchise was star-struck,” said David Poile Isaiah Oliver Jersey , who was Washington’s general manager from 1982-1995.
”They’ve had all these really good teams, all of these opportunities that appeared that this could be the year that they could win playoff rounds and compete for the Cup or win the Stanley Cup. … It just feels like – as Barry Trotz would say – the hockey gods have evened things out.”
Before this spring, the Capitals had made it past the second round of the playoffs just twice and reached the final once, when Tikkanen and Co. were swept by the Red Wings. Abe and Irene Pollin, the longtime owners of the Capitals and NBA’s Bullets/Wizards, had to learn how to handle losing.
”My husband and I had developed a habit of when we lost, we would go to eat frozen custard to help us deal with the loss,” Irene Pollin recalled.
There were a lot of chances for custard: Teams leading 3-1 in a best-of-seven series have won 91 percent of the time (276-2 . Of those 28, the Capitals have blown such a lead five times – the most of any team. There was no such falloff this time.
Winning just one game against the expansion Golden Knights already made this the most successful season in the history of a franchise that began in 1974-75. It was, by the way, the worst first-year team in NHL history (8-67-5) that developed into a team known for postseason failures – which only worsened in the Alex Ovechkin era.
For many of the players who have been through it all, the strong showing against Vegas was long overdue.
”I’m part of history. I’m part of not winning a Cup here for a long time,” said longtime scoring winger Peter Bondra, who played for the Capitals from 1990-2004.
”I don’t even play, but I feel like a part of this team Cheap Josh Rosen Jersey , believe it or not. It’s just something in it. Obviously, I play here for 14 years, I grew up here with the team as a player, my family grew up here.”
After missing the playoffs in their first eight seasons, there was a ”Save the Caps” campaign in 1982 just to keep them around and in Washington.
”We couldn’t sell tickets,” said Irene Pollin, now 93. ”We went to Montreal to fight for the franchise, So for three days and three nights we were up and I was in a nightgown typing letters to the president and everybody to have them send letters to the league because they kept saying, `Washington is a southern city, it’ll never be a hockey town.”’
Abe Pollin that summer hired Poile as his general manager. When the 33-year-old executive asked for a three-year contract, Pollin agreed but only after telling Poile he’d better do well in the first season or the franchise might fold.
Less than two weeks later, Poile changed the course of the franchise by acquiring eventual Hall of Fame defenseman Rod Langway. Washington made the playoffs in all 13 seasons with Poile in charge but couldn’t break through.
”We had to play against some of the great teams ever in the NHL: We had to go against the Islanders who won four straight, the Rangers were always on the border, Pittsburgh when Mario (Lemieux) came in,” said Langway Cheap Kerryon Johnson Jersey , who played 11 seasons for the Capitals. ”We challenged them, we competed with them, but we couldn’t get over the hump.”
That became the Capitals’ unwelcome hallmark. Plenty of times an improbable play ended a promising run, whether it was the Rangers’ Pierre Larouche beating Pete Peeters from a sharp angle in 1986 or Lafontaine’s shot through traffic for the Game 7 winner a year later early on Easter morning at the Capital Centre in nearby Landover, Maryland.
”To me, that is sort of what happened, the epitome of what has happened to this franchise,” said winger-turned-broadcaster Craig Laughlin, who came to Washington in the Langway trade and never left. ”We didn’t get those type of bounces. It seemed like every other team did but we didn’t.”
That continued to Tikkanen in 1998 and into the ”Rock the Red” era with Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. They lost in overtime of Game 7 in 2008 on a Flyers power play, in 2009 on home ice when the Penguins blew them out, in 2010 when Canadiens goaltender Jaroslav Halak stopped 41 of 42 shots in Game 7, in 201.
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