Joe Thornton makes long-awaited return to San Jose, still chasing a Cup with the Panthers
Joe Thornton is modest enough to insist he didn’t expect any sort of tribute from the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday — he will get one — and sentimental enough know the first few shifts of his long-awaited return to the SAP Center were going to be tough to get through.
He is the best player in Sharks history and, by extension, the individual most responsible for the their run of success throughout the past two decades, when they made the Stanley Cup playoffs 13 times from 2005 to 2020, reached the Western Conference finals four times and went to the 2016 Stanley Cup Finals.
It also means he’s the individual most associated with what San Jose couldn’t get done in those 15 years, when the Sharks had the NHL’s best regular-season record, yet never brought a Stanley Cup back to San Jose.
“We were so close,” Thornton said. “Ultimately, we didn’t get it done.”
It’s the second half of this legacy — the inability to get it done — which has led him to this point, where he’s still playing for the Florida Panthers, trying to win an elusive championship and coming back to California as a visitor. For the first time since he let the Sharks in 2020, Thornton returned to San Jose on Tuesday to face the Sharks after the COVID-19 pandemic kept him from a homecoming last year with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Those 15 thrilling years on the West Coast — he was 26 when he got there and 41 when he left — ended in heartbreak every time and meant Thornton was still searching when his contract expired in 2020 with San Jose still in the beginning stages of a rebuild.
He first went to the Maple Leafs on a one-year deal and Toronto, despite winning the North Division, got upset in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. He went into the summer with a short list of teams he was interested in and ultimately settled on the Panthers on another one-year deal.
At 42, he’s still searching for a title. Florida, of course, is rooting for him to do it. He gets the sense his old fans are, too.
“The fan base has been unbelievable,” Thornton said. “They still look after players here and for them to still be thinking of me after a couple years removed — it’s special.”
It’s hard to overstate Thronton’s importance to the Sharks, who only reached the NHL Conference finals once in the 14 years before the forward got there. San Jose, sort of like South Florida, isn’t a typical hockey region, yet the Sharks at one point sold out 205 consecutive games in the heart of Thornton’s run.
There are obvious parallels to draw between Thornton’s first year in San Jose and his first in Sunrise. The Sharks were a team on the rise when they traded for Thornton — they made the Conference finals the prior season — and the Panthers were, too, after putting together the best regular season in franchise history last year.
From a country away, Thornton watched Florida ascend and then battle the eventual-champion Tampa Bay Lightning for six games in the first round of the 2021 playoffs. While the Panthers seemed to come out of nowhere, Thornton wasn’t surprised.
“If you really stepped back and you looked at their lineup, it’s a solid [expletive] lineup. It has everything to make a deep run,” he told the Miami Herald in the preseason. “It just felt right for me and the family.”
He moved his family to South Florida, enrolled his son in minor hockey at the Florida Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs and embraced his new home.
So far, the situation has been perfect. Florida entered Tuesday with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference, and Thornton has only had to play 24 games. The Panthers, with seven players with at least 15 goals, are deep enough to give the Hart Memorial Trophy winner ample rest and time to recover from injuries. His return Tuesday came after he missed the previous 13 games with an unspecified injury and, even though he said there was a bit of a worry he wouldn’t be back for this moment, was able to gear his return to the ice around this game.
There’s a real chance Florida, where he’s a part-time player and ultimately just passing through, is where he’ll finally win a ring. It would be a strange situation for San Jose, but the Sharks know how much he deserves one.
“The people up here are great,” Thornton said, “and I’m happy to have them on my side.”
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 5:09 PM.
