The Sharks Sterility Stare gets a penultimate update this season today, as we sort of have forgotten about the present-day NHL recently. That’s the challenge with long regular seasons, of course: the day-to-day just doesn’t seem to matter as much in real time. Of course, maybe that’s just us and our historian mindset(s). Either way, it’s time to check in with the worst team in North American professional hockey … again. Yay!

San Jose current record for 2024-2025: 18-41-9 (.331)
Sharks projected record for 82 games this season: 23-50-9 (.335)
San Jose record last year (2023-2024): 19-54-9 (.287)
NHL record for worst season in 82-game history: 14-57-11 (.238)

The San Jose Sharks have been maintaining their level of mediocrity for awhile, obviously. Like last year, they’re fortunately not going to end up in danger of making the worst kind of history. We have to remember, though, that the San Jose franchise did set an all-time low for an 84-game season in the 1992-1993 regular season. Of course, the league only played an 84-game schedule twice, so the record is firm.

In that annus horribilis, the Sharks won just 11 times. That is not a typo: they also lost 71 times and managed just two ties. We won’t break down that roster, but suffice it to say, it’s a shocker that San Jose finished 23rd of 24 teams in scoring, although the team gave up the most goals in the league. Interestingly enough, the expansion Ottawa Senators finished with just ten victories, although both teams had 24 points total. Ouch.

So, that team set the record for fewest wins (10-70-4), while the Sharks set the record for most losses (11-71-2). Ottawa scored just 202 goals, compared to San Jose’s 218 markers. But in coughing up 414 goals, the Sharks easily were the worst team on defense as the Sens surrendered a mere 395 goals. Everything requires context, so we see these current Sharks aren’t even close to being the terrible we saw in the past.

As it stands now, though, San Jose is on pace for another “worst record in the league” season, and the trade we examined recently just illustrates the issues. The front office really blew it with Logan Couture, the team “captain” who has played just six games in the last two seasons due to a groin injury. We’re not saying he’s solely responsible for all these debacles, but he is the symbol of it all for a front office that messed up.

Remember, the Sharks posted the best aggregate regular-season record in the NHL over a 20-season period, from 1998 to 2019. And then it all went south in a hurry: starting with the firing of then-Head Coach Pete DeBoer, the team went into the tank as Covid came along. The franchise is now on its third coach since then, with worse results than the 15-16-2 record to the start of the 2019-2020 season that got DeBoer fired.

Oh, how the Sharks would love to be a .500 team now, right?