Joe Pavelski Officially Retires

[Lebanezer]

Doug Wilson Admits Not Re-Signing Joe Pavelski Was A Mistake​

"Sometimes, you can overanalyze things," Wilson told Sheng Peng. "But I, as a GM, with my love for Pavs and realizing how special he was, I look back, I probably should have dismissed historical analysis of contracts for players that age and said screw it."

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Ex-GM Wilson regrets letting Pavelski leave Sharks: ‘It was a mistake'

Former Sharks general manager Doug Wilson expressed his regret about letting Joe Pavelski leave San Jose in NHL free agency in 2019.

www.nbcsportsbayarea.com

 

[karltonian]

Doug Wilson Admits Not Re-Signing Joe Pavelski Was A Mistake​

"Sometimes, you can overanalyze things," Wilson told Sheng Peng. "But I, as a GM, with my love for Pavs and realizing how special he was, I look back, I probably should have dismissed historical analysis of contracts for players that age and said screw it."

lol man wilson continues to be wrong about things. it was not a mistake in the least, it was a series of decent gambles that lost.
the mistakes were not protecting the pick that became stutzle and losing kane for nothing.

 

[gaucholoco3]

lol man wilson continues to be wrong about things. it was not a mistake in the least, it was a series of decent gambles that lost.
the mistakes were not protecting the pick that became stutzle and losing kane for nothing.

Exactly Pavs was horrible the first year of that deal. Also I’m glad he didn’t protect the pick. As painful as the last 5 years have been it will end up being better in the long run. Getting Celebrini to go along with Smith, Eklund, and Dickinson this team has one of the brightest 10-15 year future as any other in the league.

 

[hotcabbagesoup]

And on losing Kane for nothing? I was glad to get rid of that contract and that guy and getting off scot-free. That situation was a stressful headache.

 

[OrrNumber4]

the mistakes were not protecting the pick

I don't think this was feasible because they already had to settle for a pick two years into the future.

that became stutzle and losing kane for nothing.

Touching Kane was a gigantic mistake, but getting rid of him was 100% the right move.

Obviously that 2020 team was bad, but it had something on paper. If you subtract Kane's toxicity and add Pavelski's intangibles maybe you get a playoff team.

 

[TheBigDrunkPanda]

Doug Wilson Admits Not Re-Signing Joe Pavelski Was A Mistake​

"Sometimes, you can overanalyze things," Wilson told Sheng Peng. "But I, as a GM, with my love for Pavs and realizing how special he was, I look back, I probably should have dismissed historical analysis of contracts for players that age and said screw it."

So your saying holding onto an aging Pavelski was more important then having Smith, Musty, Eklund, Dickinson, and Celebreni now?

 

[TheBigDrunkPanda]

I don't think this was feasible because they already had to settle for a pick two years into the future.

Touching Kane was a gigantic mistake, but getting rid of him was 100% the right move.

Obviously that 2020 team was bad, but it had something on paper. If you subtract Kane's toxicity and add Pavelski's intangibles maybe you get a playoff team.

Not with Jones in net and declining Pickles, not even McJesus would’ve got those teams in the playoffs with Jones in net

 

[gaucholoco3]

Not with Jones in net and declining Pickles, not even McJesus would’ve got those teams in the playoffs with Jones in net

That 2020 season the Sharks got hit hard with injuries to both Couture and Hertl in addition to EK still not fully recovered from his groin injury.

After digging more that team had only 4 top 6 forwards in Hertl, Kane, Meier, and Couture. This meant two of Labanc, Melker, Goodrow, Gambrell, Sorensen, or Thornton would have had to be in the top 6. They even had to convince 40 year old Marleau to come back 15 games in.

The D had EK, Burns, Dillon, Vlassic, Ferraro, and Simek. This should have been enough even with Vlassic’s decline.

Ferraro - Burns
Dillon - EK
Simek - Vlassic

A lot of things went wrong but it’s not hard to see the D and top 4 forwards carrying this team to at least a playoff spot which they were still in striking distance of until Hertl got hurt ending their hopes.

To say that team never could have made the playoffs is a bit pessimistic.

 

[The McMafia]

That 2020 season the Sharks got hit hard with injuries to both Couture and Hertl in addition to EK still not fully recovered from his groin injury.

After digging more that team had only 4 top 6 forwards in Hertl, Kane, Meier, and Couture. This meant two of Labanc, Melker, Goodrow, Gambrell, Sorensen, or Thornton would have had to be in the top 6. They even had to convince 40 year old Marleau to come back 15 games in.

The D had EK, Burns, Dillon, Vlassic, Ferraro, and Simek. This should have been enough even with Vlassic’s decline.

Ferraro - Burns
Dillon - EK
Simek - Vlassic

A lot of things went wrong but it’s not hard to see the D and top 4 forwards carrying this team to at least a playoff spot which they were still in striking distance of until Hertl got hurt ending their hopes.

To say that team never could have made the playoffs is a bit pessimistic.

Retrospectively, it was probably for the best (for the fans) that the team fell apart that quickly in 2020 and the lockdowns created a time warp. Even if fully healthy and with two full seasons those teams don't have a chance of winning a cup in 2020 or 2021. Not much depth outside of the main top 6.

 

[Hangemhigh]

DW's best move was getting Thornton. He made his GM career off of it. Everything else went downhill from there.

 

[TheBigDrunkPanda]

That 2020 season the Sharks got hit hard with injuries to both Couture and Hertl in addition to EK still not fully recovered from his groin injury.

After digging more that team had only 4 top 6 forwards in Hertl, Kane, Meier, and Couture. This meant two of Labanc, Melker, Goodrow, Gambrell, Sorensen, or Thornton would have had to be in the top 6. They even had to convince 40 year old Marleau to come back 15 games in.

The D had EK, Burns, Dillon, Vlassic, Ferraro, and Simek. This should have been enough even with Vlassic’s decline.

Ferraro - Burns
Dillon - EK
Simek - Vlassic

A lot of things went wrong but it’s not hard to see the D and top 4 forwards carrying this team to at least a playoff spot which they were still in striking distance of until Hertl got hurt ending their hopes.

To say that team never could have made the playoffs is a bit pessimistic.

You say pessimistic I say realistic, the whole basis for your point is based on “what if scenarios” which are not based in reality, throw a struggling pavelski into that line up and doesn’t change the outcome.
I can easily say what if someone other then Couture scored in the 2016 Stanley cup finals the sharks would’ve beaten the penguins lot what if selanne scored on the wrap around against the AV’s what if pavelski scored for more then 2 rounds it can go on forever. Fans have way to much revisionist history and remember certain situations being way better then they actually were

 

[coooldude]

DW's best move was getting Thornton. He made his GM career off of it. Everything else went downhill from there.

It's a bit reductive. As was (painfully) discussed elsewhere, he had a league-best first ~5-10 years of drafting, finding a lot of NHL regulars (and two all stars in Vlasic and Pavs) in late drafting rounds. While those years were so good that his entire tenure can in some analyses grade out as "best overall" the truth is that his drafting fell off very hard in the 2010's, where he was mediocre at best and bottom quartile often.

On trades, he made the Thornton trade, and he also made the Boyle trade and the Burns trade, all three of which were massive for the franchise. He then tried to run back the "franchise defining trade" game with Karlsson and Kane, neither of which worked out anywhere near as well as the Boyle/Burns/Thornton trades, and in my personal opinion (which others def disagree with) were both huge misses although both looked pretty exciting at the time.

Lastly, as has been discussed elsewhere (@The Nemesis had a great post on the main boards), he for whatever reason decided to lock in our 30-ish core players (incl the EK's) to 6, 7, and 8 year contracts with NTC/NMC's from 2017-2020, and thus gave us the massive hangover we are still recovering from. The final "vodka shot at 3am" of this hangover was the re-signing of Hertl which I put fully on DW's shoulders.

He gave us 20 years of playoff contention, a bunch of years where we thought we were contenders (only proved out we weren't because of depth or injuries or star players choking, pick your poisonous opinion), and he left us with one of the worst cap, pipeline, and competitiveness situations the league has ever seen.

So it's a huge mixed bag but I would hardly say it was all negative but for the Thornton trade.

 

[The Nemesis]

The Thornton trade was November 2005. Between then and and DW's firing

failed to make the playoffs 4 times (3 of which were his final 3 seasons and the last one only sorta half-counts because it was the year he was let go in April)
made the 1st round of the playoffs 4 times
made the 2nd round 6 times
made the conf. final 3 times
made the SC Final once

In the 17 years DW was in charge of the Sharks post Thornton trade they had a run where made the playoffs in like 14 of 15 seasons including 3 conference finals and a trip to the cup final.

It would be literally impossible for them to sustain that level of success if Doug Wilson peaked with the Jumbo trade in 05 and then went downhill after that.

As Cooldude mentioned above, in a main board thread about the Pavelski retirement I noted what was ultimately Wilson's major undoing, which was his overriding loyalty to the core and unwillingness to make the hard choices except when his hand was forced. That cup final led to him going all in on basically every major player on the roster in a desperate bid to keep the group together, slowly strangling their cap space to the point that the Pavelski departure decision was pretty much made for him and then continuing to triple down on that until we got to the old, broken, and overpaid roster that got him fired and had to be purged by Grier & co.

Pavs signed his last Shark deal in 2013 and it ran 2014-2019. During that, Wilson:

gave Burns an 8-year deal
gave Vlasic an 8-year deal*
gave Jones a 6-year deal that the team had to buy out 3 years later*
gave Kane a 7-year deal that ended up voided during all the covid protocol/off-ice nonsense
gave Couture an 8-year deal*
gave Karlsson an 8-year deal

Then after Pavs' deal expired DW pretty much couldn't afford to offer him the kind of contract he got from the Stars (though, as must be said, choosing not to offer mid-30s Pavelski a multi-year deal that would pay him like a first liner was a reasonable choice. It would've been a hella-risky bet to figure Pavs would be 1-in-a-thousand guy to defy the aging curve). But 3 years later he scraped together enough cap space to give Hertl his nutso 8-year extension.

And I believe that the starred deals above and the Hertl one were all early extensions signed a year ahead of their current deals expiring.

THAT is the legacy of Doug Wilson. He did a great job of assembling a strong core of players, but then hooked onto them so hard that he made a ton of player-friendly loyalty-driven mistakes.

The other major flaw on the DW resume was that he tended to be bad at assembling depth for his teams, as he either over-spent on questionable FAs or backed poor internal options. But this sort of thing is a reasonably common GM issue, so it's not just a DW thing.

 

[coooldude]

The other major flaw on the DW resume was that he tended to be bad at assembling depth for his teams, as he either over-spent on questionable FAs or backed poor internal options. But this sort of thing is a reasonably common GM issue, so it's not just a DW thing.

Well stated as always... and, cosign on the bolded. It turns out building series-winning depth in the NHL is actually not very easy.

 

[OrrNumber4]

So your saying holding onto an aging Pavelski was more important then having Smith, Musty, Eklund, Dickinson, and Celebreni now?

DW's best move was getting Thornton. He made his GM career off of it. Everything else went downhill from there.

Just like getting rid of Pavelski was the right move, and in the end resulted in a new path with Celebrini et.al, letting go of Thornton was what should have happened. In the short-term, no doubt the Sharks suffer and don't make the playoffs, but that would lead to a different path with shiny new prospects and a chance at winning a championship.

It should be evident that there was no path to winning a cup with Thornton as a top player on the team. It's the same problem Toronto faces now. You won't win much when your top forward turns into a pumpkin as soon as the playoffs start.

 

[DG93]

The Thornton trade was November 2005. Between then and and DW's firing

failed to make the playoffs 4 times (3 of which were his final 3 seasons and the last one only sorta half-counts because it was the year he was let go in April)
made the 1st round of the playoffs 4 times
made the 2nd round 6 times
made the conf. final 3 times
made the SC Final once

In the 17 years DW was in charge of the Sharks post Thornton trade they had a run where made the playoffs in like 14 of 15 seasons including 3 conference finals and a trip to the cup final.

It would be literally impossible for them to sustain that level of success if Doug Wilson peaked with the Jumbo trade in 05 and then went downhill after that.

As Cooldude mentioned above, in a main board thread about the Pavelski retirement I noted what was ultimately Wilson's major undoing, which was his overriding loyalty to the core and unwillingness to make the hard choices except when his hand was forced. That cup final led to him going all in on basically every major player on the roster in a desperate bid to keep the group together, slowly strangling their cap space to the point that the Pavelski departure decision was pretty much made for him and then continuing to triple down on that until we got to the old, broken, and overpaid roster that got him fired and had to be purged by Grier & co.

Pavs signed his last Shark deal in 2013 and it ran 2014-2019. During that, Wilson:

gave Burns an 8-year deal
gave Vlasic an 8-year deal*
gave Jones a 6-year deal that the team had to buy out 3 years later*
gave Kane a 7-year deal that ended up voided during all the covid protocol/off-ice nonsense
gave Couture an 8-year deal*
gave Karlsson an 8-year deal

Then after Pavs' deal expired DW pretty much couldn't afford to offer him the kind of contract he got from the Stars (though, as must be said, choosing not to offer mid-30s Pavelski a multi-year deal that would pay him like a first liner was a reasonable choice. It would've been a hella-risky bet to figure Pavs would be 1-in-a-thousand guy to defy the aging curve). But 3 years later he scraped together enough cap space to give Hertl his nutso 8-year extension.

And I believe that the starred deals above and the Hertl one were all early extensions signed a year ahead of their current deals expiring.

THAT is the legacy of Doug Wilson. He did a great job of assembling a strong core of players, but then hooked onto them so hard that he made a ton of player-friendly loyalty-driven mistakes.

The other major flaw on the DW resume was that he tended to be bad at assembling depth for his teams, as he either over-spent on questionable FAs or backed poor internal options. But this sort of thing is a reasonably common GM issue, so it's not just a DW thing.

Great post, would also add that he sucked at coaching hires and finding competent goaltending

 

[OrrNumber4]

Great post, would also add that he sucked at coaching hires and finding competent goaltending

Until 2019, the Sharks had above-average goaltending for every year besides 2015.

They rarely had elite goaltending, especially in the playoffs, but in most years I'd always blame the skaters over the goaltenders.

 

[DG93]

Until 2019, the Sharks had above-average goaltending for every year besides 2015.

They rarely had elite goaltending, especially in the playoffs, but in most years I'd always blame the skaters over the goaltenders.

Not sure I'd call Niemi in 2014 above-average goaltending

 

[OrrNumber4]

Not sure I'd call Niemi in 2014 above-average goaltending

Hmm, maybe that's fair, though the defense was atrocious that year. Maybe he was just "average" that year; in any case, that's definitely "competent".

 

[karltonian]

The idea of above average goaltending isn't a simple black and white calculation. If the team is committing to shot suppression and defensive play then that's different from having a great goalie that stops the pucks without having to build the system to support them.

When Joe Thornton has to change his whole game to play Selke type defense and take d zone faceoffs to help make up for goaltending, that keeps him from scoring more in the playoffs than in the regular season.

When you have to pull him into the defensive shell when you lose Vlasic, it makes losing a 3-0 series lead possible.

A mediocre goalie can put up good numbers behind a juggernaut team but the costs of that mediocrity come due when the going gets the toughest.

 

[OrrNumber4]

The idea of above average goaltending isn't a simple black and white calculation. If the team is committing to shot suppression and defensive play then that's different from having a great goalie that stops the pucks without having to build the system to support them.

Sure

When Joe Thornton has to change his whole game to play Selke type defense and take d zone faceoffs to help make up for goaltending, that keeps him from scoring more in the playoffs than in the regular season.

This never happened in the universe I'm familiar with.

When you have to pull him into the defensive shell when you lose Vlasic, it makes losing a 3-0 series lead possible.

Right. That was the issue. Too much attention to defense.

A mediocre goalie can put up good numbers behind a juggernaut team but the costs of that mediocrity come due when the going gets the toughest.

I don't think Nabokov or Niemi were mediocre goalies. I think they disappointed in the playoffs, and with perfect hindsight I would have traded Nabokov before 2005 and Niemi after 2013; you can reasonably make the case against Nabby after 2009 and Niemi after 2014. But, I'd argue that come the playoffs, goaltending was never the primary issue. As a construction, as brilliant as Jones was in 2016, he was culprit #1 in 2018 and 2019.