RedState Sports Report: When Your Favorite Team Is Really, Really Bad

As has been discussed here before, in a world of horror and hysteria, the comfort of sports as a distraction, a chance to refuel and refresh, is most welcome. Most fans know that sports are not a matter of life and death, no matter how much one may wish to scream, “You’re KILLING me!” at their team of choice when its performance is something less than stellar. Still, sports’ purpose is enjoyment. Moments of shared celebration or commiseration are the rule, even as it is the rule that come season’s end, only one team will be standing triumphant while the rest clean out their lockers and mutter to themselves and each other, “Wait’ll next year.”

That said, sometimes we fans wish next year would skip ahead a few seasons, as reality dictates there is a 99.44 percent chance of the upcoming next year being just as bad if not worse than this year’s next year. Such is the case with my favorite team, Los Tiburones de San José. Or, if you prefer, the San Jose Sharks.

Regardless of which sport is involved, when you start the season with 11 straight losses, it’s a safe bet to say you are the worst team in the league. The Sharks started the 2023-2024 season with — you guessed it — 11 straight losses, ten in regulation time and one in a shootout. Throughout these 11 games, San Jose scored 12 goals. The most goals they scored in one game? Three. Meanwhile, in regulation time, the Sharks allowed … deep breath … 54 goals. 54. This includes two consecutive games in which they allowed ten goals. In each game. And at home, no less. Little more needs to be said.

It’s not that San Jose wasn’t trying to win. Nor is this some devious plan to tank the entire season so as to enhance chances for the #1 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft. Unlike the 2023 Draft, the 2024 outing will have no “generational” players, no Connor Bedard over which ESPN can incessantly salivate. One Macklin Celebrini, currently a part of the highly regarded Boston University hockey program, is the consensus top player available. From all reports, he is a quality center. But he’s not regarded in the same light as Bedard. That said, were he to don the teal, he would at the least provide a more fun name for sportswriters to play with than San Jose’s first-round pick from this year, the talented centerman Will Smith, who, in a touch of irony, is spending this season playing for Boston University. Let’s face it: those Fresh Prince jokes will not stay fresh for long, although watching Jada Pinkett-Smith whine about it will be entertaining. But back to the present.

The problem facing Sharks General Manager Mike Grier in his second full year in the position is trying to rework a team that spent years paying through the nose for the status of being good but not good enough. Multiple years of playoff appearances and one Western Conference championship hid how the franchise overspent and overextended veteran players via contracts that seemed reasonable at the time but, in hindsight, were too rich and too long. Further, for years, San Jose did not do a good job of keeping the roster replenished through quality drafting. Returning the Sharks to contender status is going to take a while.

Since professional sports offers teams no option to sit it out until they can be where they want to be, the Sharks have no choice but to take their lumps and hope no one’s confidence is permanently ruined by losing. A lot. And often badly. As little fun as this provides us, the fans, one can only imagine how much drearier it must be for the players who put in the work, make the necessary sacrifices, get out on the ice, and get smoked night after monotonous night.

The question arises from a fan standpoint as to why one should put him or herself through this. Why buy a ticket? Which, based on attendance at what used to be a routinely sold-out SAP Center, is happening with far less frequency than before. Why turn on the TV or radio? Why wear team apparel, let alone buy anything new? You might as well don a t-shirt for Charlie Brown’s baseball team. At least there was humor in the situation.

I can’t answer for anyone else, but for myself, it boils down to the essence of being a fan.

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hardly a traditional hockey market. My first exposure to the game was when I was eight years old, and the NHL expanded from six teams to 12, one of them being the Oakland Seals. The Seals were never very good, eventually moving to Cleveland for two years and then merging into the Minnesota North Stars. But, they were my team, as I noted last season when the Sharks rolled out an alternate jersey paying homage to the long-lost franchise. Quoting from that post:

When I was in the days of my youth, I fell in love with hockey in general and the Seals in particular. It didn’t matter that they were seldom better than mediocre. This was my team, my sport. I read and re-read every word about them in the local paper. I did the old transistor radio under the pillow trick so I could listen to the games undisturbed well past my assigned bedtime. The team was usually dreadful, but I didn’t care. When the Seals moved to Cleveland, I was devastated even beyond the obligatory teenage angst permeating my being during those days. My fondest live sports moment came in 1991 when the Sharks played their first home pre-season game in their inaugural year. As the team took the ice for pregame warmup, the fans in attendance spontaneously stood as one and applauded, me with them, as the joy of finally having a hockey team I could call my own took hold.
So yes, even as fiercely mediocre as the Sharks are this year, I still root for them while hoping for better days ahead. This is what sports should be about. Never let them steal your joy.

And so I continue. The Sharks will get better. They have to; it’d be far too much work to get any worse. The season will continue, with the occasional win and far more often thorough drubbings. Yet I will remain a fan, enduring the now, approaching each game individually with the hope this one will be rewarding. If it is, awesome. If not, I’ll deal.

Did I mention how the Sharks game against the Philadelphia Flyers on November 7 came out?