San Jose Sharks owner and friend of the blog Hasso Plattner wrote a letter to Sharks fans. I use the term “wrote” in as loose a way as allowed, because the “letter” can only be described as indecisive, mindless and rudderless drivel. Let’s take a look through some of the choice segments.
For fans everywhere in the world it is difficult to see their favorite team missing the season goals. The Sharks had a good run for many years and made it three times to the conference finals, but that’s not enough when the competition from Southern California won the cup three times in the same time frame.
Thank you for reminding us.
We got fortunate when we acquired Joe Thornton in a trade and had with Todd McLellan an excellent head coach. What was the missing piece? Was it drafting, trading, rental players, we tried them all. We clearly had a window of opportunity, but the NHL has a very balanced constitution which doesn’t allow for money to become the dominant factor. You can’t buy a team, you have to build it which is very fair. And after you traded picks for ready-to-play veterans, you sooner or later have to start rebuilding the team.
Trading for Joe Thornton was luck, according to Plattner, but the Sharks not winning the Stanley Cup must have had something to do with something.
We had hoped that we can do both, stay competitive and rebuild at the same time. It was close but the other teams in our conference were better, at least throughout the whole season and deservedly finished ahead of us. Remember where we were end of January in the standings? Now the question is should we have traded for reinforcements and block the young hopefuls from playing or should we have started the rebuilding process even a year or two earlier?
The problem here, buddy, is that you can do both and instead you didn’t do fucking either of them. John Scott! Mike Brown! Scott Hannan! Mirco Mueller was dicked around! You and your general manager fucked with the team thereby making them worse than the rest of the teams in the conference without actively rebuilding! You blocked young hopefuls by allowing terrible old hockey players to play for your hockey team.
The answer is that it doesn’t matter anymore, we are where we are. Seven young players made the team, another few hopefuls with great success stories in the juniors can be watched playing for the Barracuda next season. Once we committed ourselves to the rebuild we had to steer straight, even if there was some disappointment.
“We fucked up the Sharks, causing them to miss the playoffs without actually committing to a rebuild. This does not matter.”
At this point I have to imagine you’re starting to feel a bit sorry for Plattner; or, he sure seems to feel that way. Let’s gather around to hear a sob story from the corporate billionaire.
The management, John and Doug, did a good job. We are trying to finalize with the City of San Jose a new arena deal keeping the Sharks at home. We are trying but have not been successful to change the unfavorable TV deal the Sharks management signed a while ago. On the other hand, we got the organization streamlined and focused on hockey. The coaching staff had been outstanding, the seven continuous years with Head Coach McLellan is a testimony of that. The rebuild is in full progress, the team is now amongst the youngest in the league and has a great future.
Oh FUCK YOU buddy. You’re worth $9.1 BILLION DOLLARS playing in a perfectly fine downtown arena. None of the people receiving this letter give a FUCK about your terrible television contract, your 20-year old building or, at this point, literally anything else you have to say.
Beyond the godawful content of this message, it appears that Plattner drafted a letter in German, ran it through Google Translate and plopped it on the Sharks website. When delivering shitty content to frustrated fans, why bother proofreading?
This letter can, apparently, be taken as an official endorsement for Doug Wilson, who will try to salvage this dumpster fire next season. Or maybe pick up some more gasoline.
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