Why It REALLY Sucks To Be A San Jose Sharks Fan

Why It REALLY Sucks To Be A San Jose Sharks Fan

You weren’t born into a dynasty. You were born into teal. No original six mystique. No legacy banners hanging in the rafters. Just a weird fish logo, a too cool for its own good color scheme, and a franchise that’s been teasing greatness since before you could spell playoffs. You grew up on Jumbo Joe’s beard, and Patrick Marlo’s loyalty. You learned the names Chichu, NBA, and Sedaguchi, not because they were legends, but because they were yours. Your first jersey wasn’t a Hall of Famers. It was Milan McAuliff, a guy who peaked in NHL 2006, got traded for Heatley, and probably sells real estate in Saskatchewan now. But you wore it anyway, proudly, stupidly, because that’s what being a Sharks fan is, an exercise in unearned optimism and repeated heartbreak. Dressed in teal and black like a funeral with glow sticks. You didn’t inherit greatness. You inherited almost almost great, almost a champion, almost mattered. And the worst part, you believed every single year. Still here? Good. Misery loves company. And Sharks fans have been miserable since 91. The San Jose Sharks have been in the league for over 30 years and still get treated like NHL’s cool little startup that never quite launched. Every season begins the same. The Sharks could be sneaky good this year. Sneaky good? Bro, we’re 33 years old. We got debt, back pain, and zero cups. We’re not sneaky. We’re sad. You’re not a threat, you’re a trivia question. What’s the team with the sick jerseys and O-rings? Oh, right. San Jose. Even when the Sharks were elite, President’s Trophy in ’09, Cup final in 2016, nobody feared them. They respected the roster, sure, but deep down, everyone knew San Jose would find a way to fumble the bag like a clumsy Door Dash driver on a gravel road. Because being a Sharks fan means rooting for a team that’s always just good enough to get your hopes up and just fragile enough to snap your soul like it’s made of dry linguini. You’re not the hunted. You’re not the hunter. You’re the guy who shows up late to the playoff party, brings warm beer, and gets bounced before dessert. But hey, at least you look good doing it. Think it can’t get worse? Oh, buddy, let me introduce you to our playoff resume. You want consistency. The Sharks gave it to you. 21 playoff appearances in 33 years, which sounds impressive until you realize they treated the Stanley Cup like it was radioactive. Every spring they’d show up in April like, “Hey guys, what if we almost did something cool again?” It was a masterclass in emotional manipulation. You had Hall of Fame talent. Thornton dishing no look passes. Marlo skating like a deer on Adderall. Pavileki scoring goals off his face. But every playoff run ended the same way. choking, folding, crashing like a Windows 98 desktop. 30-0 series lead gone. Top seed in the West gone. Home ice advantage also gone along with your will to live. You were the team nobody wanted to face until they did. And then they realized beating the Sharks in May was like finding an Uber on New Year’s Eve. Takes a while, but you’ll get there eventually. Even your rivals knew the deal. The Kings, the Ducks, the Blackhawks. They didn’t fear, San Jose. They just waited for the Sharks to beat themselves. And you did over and over and over again. Because this wasn’t just losing. This was a slow surgical dissection of hope. A decade long playoff tease that always ended with a middle finger in a jersey toss. You weren’t cursed. You were dependable. The NHL’s annual reminder that being good isn’t the same as being dangerous. Hope peaked in 2016, right before reality threw it through a pane of plexiglass. This was it, the year. The Stars aligned. The window opened. The Sharks didn’t just sneak into the playoffs. They kicked the door down like Brent Burns with a Red Bull addiction. Logan Couture was possessed. Joe Pavilles couldn’t miss. Martin Jones went full demigod between the pipes. Even Joel Ward was scoring clutch goals like he was trying to rewrite his Wikipedia page. You beat the Kings. You outlasted the Predators. You dropped the Blues like a bad habit. And for once, once it felt like this team wasn’t built to break you, it was built to win. You were four wins away. Four. And then the Penguins happened. Crosby, Maul, and Latang. The holy trinity of pain. They didn’t just beat the Sharks, they dismantled them like IKEA furniture after a breakup. Martin Jones stood on his head, his spine, and probably his taxes. And it still wasn’t enough. Six games, one handshake line of flood of teal tears, and you told yourself, “It’s okay. We’ll be back. This score has one more run.” Spoiler, they didn’t. That was the peak, the summit. And like a true Sharks fan, you didn’t even get a selfie at the top. Just a polite shove back into mediocrity. Thought 2016 hurt? Wait till you win a game on a volleyball assist and still get bounced like a Super Bowl. If 2016 was the peak, 2019 was the acid trip on the way down. First, you beat Vegas thanks to the most hilariously absurd 5-minute major in playoff history. Cody Eken taps Pavilleski’s chest. Pavs falls like he got sniped from the upper deck and the refs lose their damn minds. Four power play goals later and suddenly you’re the comeback kings. Then came Colorado, a hard-fought series with more video reviews than an episode of To Catch a Predator. And somehow you’re in the conference final. Enter St. Louis. Enter game three. Enter one of the most infuriating moments in hockey history. Eric Carlson scores an OT. The sap center or rocks. Sharks win. Except team meer clearly bats the puck with his hand like full volleyball spike. Set pass goal. Everyone sees it. The players, the fans, your grandma watching from her iPad. Everyone except the refs who apparently decided uh rules are more of a suggestion in California. And the best part, it wasn’t reviewable. You didn’t just get a miracle win, you got a league sanctioned crime. The hockey gods, they noticed. They took it personally. The Blues proceeded to turn you into a chum in games 4, 5, and six. Your cup dreams didn’t just die, they evaporated. Your team looked like it aged 10 years overnight. Burns was exhausted. Couture was bleeding. Carlson’s groin filed for divorce. And just like that, it was over. You weren’t a contender. You were a meme. A handpass joke that still trends on Twitter every May. You think we’d rebuild after that, right? No, we just doubled down on the disaster. You ever seen someone crash their car and then keep driving like nothing happened? That’s the sharks. 2019 was the collapse. 2019 was the moment to say, “Okay, it’s over. Time to rebuild.” Instead, San Jose said, “Nah, let’s double down on our bad contracts.” You resigned Eric Carlson for $92 million despite the fact his groin had the structural integrity of wet spaghetti. You paid Logan Couture like he was 25. You gave Mark Edward Vlic until the sun explodes and then watched him age like a banana in a sauna. No picks, no prospects, no cap space, just vibes, debt, and a power play that looks like it was choreographed by toddlers. This wasn’t a rebuild. It was a redecorated funeral. Every move screamed, “We’re still competitive.” Meanwhile, your goalie depth chart looked like a horror film, and your top scorer had 49 points. Other teams think with purpose. You tank accidentally. You weren’t bad enough for Bernard. You were just bad enough to lose 54 games and pick fourth. It’s not just mismanagement. It’s a masterclass in denial. The front office calls it a retool. The fans call it what it is, emotional fraud. You don’t have a core. You have a retirement community with no pension plan. and the future. You’ve got one prospect, a couple vibes, and a hope that the 2037 draft class has a guy who wears teal. And while the roster burned, the crease turned into an unmarked grave. The San Jose Sharks don’t develop goalies, they devour them. Since the day of Genny and Bakov left, this franchise has been running a full-time goalie exorcism service. Auntie Niami won a cup in Chicago, came to San Jose, and suddenly couldn’t track a puck if it had GPS. Martin Jones had one good season, then aged 40 years overnight. James Rhymer, he tried. Bless him, he tried. Aiden Hill left and immediately won a Stanley Cup in Vegas like he’d been faking it in teal on purpose. Every year, it’s the same. A new goalie shows up. Press conference says he’s ready to compete. By December, he’s crying into a Gatorade bottle and giving up five on 22 shots. This isn’t just a position, it’s a curse. The Shark’s Crease is a psychological thriller. One week you’re stopping 40 shots. The next you’re on waiverss replaced by a guy named Magnus Crona. Yes, that’s the real name, not a rejected Marvel villain. Doesn’t matter who’s back there. Prime Carrie Price could show up and still get lit up by the Ducks. Because when your blue line plays defense like is allergic to the slot, you could put Jesus in the net and still lose 6 to2. And you know it’s bad when even your goalie coaches start aging out mid-season. This isn’t a rebuild. It’s goalie hospice. They show up alive. They leave broken or in a body bag made of Reebok pads. At least we look good doing it, right? Right. You have the best jerseys in the NHL. Fight me. That OG shark biting through the stick. Iconic. The teal. Pure California swagger. You look like winners before you even played like winners. And yet, no cups. Not even one. You had the coolest brand, the flashiest style, and a fan base ready to party. But somehow the universe saw all that swagger and said, “Nah, that’s enough joy for you.” Brett Burns looked like a Viking cosplaying as a defensive man. Joe Thornton, hockey Buddha with a beard that had its own gravitational pole. You had the vibes. You had the core. You had the look. But that’s all it ever was, a look. The teal curse isn’t about bad luck. It’s about looking elite, skating elite, and finishing ninth in the West. You didn’t just lose. You lost beautifully. Every year you fooled the league into thinking you were a contender. Every year you tricked yourself. Your team was built from prime time until the puck dropped and suddenly you were getting dummy by the Coyotes on a Tuesday night. You had a Hall of Fame core that deserved more and a color scheme that deserved anything. But instead of glory, you got a heartbreak. Instead of banners, you got memes. You’re not cursed because you wear teal. You’re cursed because teal deserved better. You’re still watching. That’s how I know you’re a real Sharks fan. Trapped and loyal. Being a Sharks fan isn’t like being a Leafs fan. There’s no spotlight, no documentaries, no Twitter meltdowns that trend worldwide. Your heartbreak happens in the shadows. No one hates the Sharks. No one roots for them either. You’re the neutral zone of fandom. Painfully mid, emotionally ignored, and forever stuck in the West Coast time slot that no one watches. You suffer quietly. There’s no national pity tour, no glowing nostalgia reels, no TSN panel going, “What’s wrong in San Jose?” Because nobody’s watching. They don’t care. You try to talk about the pain and other fans hit you with, “Could be worse. You could be a Coyotes fan.” Yeah, at least the Coyotes know they’re a disaster. You thought you were a contender for 15 years. You thought Joe Thornton was going to carry you to the Promised Land. He didn’t. He just carried a very long beard and some very broken dreams. Every fan base gets a moment. a Cinderella run, a miracle goal, a parade. You You get reverse swept by the Kings and eliminated by the Blues after a hand pass. You don’t even have villain to cling to. You’re not hated. You’re background noise. The Sharks are the NHL equivalent of a Spotify ad. Unskippable, unmemorable. And that’s the worst pain of all. Not being bad, being forgettable. And now, let’s talk about the most painful word in Sharks history. Almost. This is what it means to be a Sharks fan. You weren’t cursed with failure. You were tortured with potential. You were never the worst. Never bottom feeders. Never a joke. You were something worse. Forgettable contenders. Always in the mix. Always dangerous on paper. Almost always. Almost made the final. Almost won the West. Almost drafted that one franchise guy, but ended up with Nikolai Goldovven and a hopeented candle. The Sharks history isn’t filled with disasters. It’s filled with empty calories. A regular season buffet of wins followed by playoff malnutrition. You look back at your best years and realize they meant nothing. No rings, no banners, no dynasty, just vibes and a sad piano montage. Joe Thornton, one of the greatest playmakers of all time. Zero cups. Patrick Marlo, most games played in NHL history. Zero cups. Brett Burns, scored like a forward, defended like a traffic cone. Also zero cups. Your legacy isn’t failure. It’s being stuck in the hockey friend zone. Too good to blow it up. Too soft to finish a job. You didn’t collapse in flames like the Oilers in the early 2010s. You didn’t sell your soul for a cup like Tampa. You just existed. And that’s what stings the most because deep down every Sharks fan knows. The window wasn’t closed. You just kept walking into it face first every spring. And yet, after all the blown leads, the bad contracts, the playoff collapses, the goalie graveyard, and the decades of almost, you’ll be back. You’ll squint at a new prospect highlight reel and whisper, “He might be the one.” You’ll talk yourself into Eklund or Guushian or whoever’s leading the rookie scoring in September. You’ll say things like, “New culture, fresh start, and building through the draft with a straight face.” You’ll buy the jersey. You’ll tweet the hype. You’ll convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, this is the year the rebuild accidentally works. It won’t. But that won’t stop you because you don’t cheer for the sharks out of hope. You do it out of habit, out of loyalty, out of some deep inherited compulsion to keep believing in something that has no intention of loving you back. You were born into teal, and teal doesn’t fade. It just slowly breaks your soul across 82 games and then asks you to reup your season tickets. So, here’s to you, the loyal, delusional, emotionally bankrupt San Jose Sharks fan. We’ll see you again next October. Same colors, same hope, same heartbreak.

Why It REALLY Sucks To Be A San Jose Sharks Fan dives deep into one of the most frustrating legacies in the NHL. From near-Cup runs that collapsed at the worst possible moment to questionable trades and a painful rebuild that feels never-ending — Sharks fans have endured it all.

This video unpacks the heartbreak, the missed opportunities, and the chaos behind the teal curtain. If you’ve ever screamed into the void after another blown lead or playoff collapse, this one’s for you.

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