All the news has been about lately is the Sharks and how they continue to fail in the post season. There are talks of taking away his captaincy as well as trading the Thornton (which would be a pretty good return) as well. Their GM wants players who want to play for the Sharks and not just live in the area and Thornton has continued to say that he wants to play there.
This is a lot of talk for a player who is still a 70-80+ point player. The Sharks also just signed him for another 3 seasons midway through this past season at a cost of 6.75 per.
That’s a big cost for a team that states it is starting a rebuild and with what they would fetch in return for the Thornton could be a great help towards the future, we are still talking about a player who is still playing at a high production level.
The Sharks are contenders now, they just have a mental lapse when it gets to the post season. Secondary scoring may be more of a need then trading Thornton.
You always want your big players to stand tall in the post season and hate when they can’t carry the load but to be successful in the NHL you need to be scoring down the line.
The Penguins are a high scoring team but only on their top 2 lines and that cost them again the Rangers in the second round, where the Rangers made it to the finals while having no players in the top 14 points but got additional scoring from lower in the lines when needed.
The Poke Check 