Sharks fire coach David Quinn after last-place finish
The San Jose Sharks fired head coach David Quinn after two campaigns at the helm, the team announced Wednesday.
The Sharks finished in last place in the league this season with an abysmal 19-54-9 record.
"David is a good coach and an even better person," general manager Mike Grier said in a statement. "I would like to personally thank him for his hard work over these past two seasons. He and his staff did an admirable job under some difficult circumstances, and I sincerely appreciate how they handled the situation."
Grier added that there's no timeline to hire a new bench boss, per San Jose Hockey Now's Sheng Peng. The executive hired Quinn to replace Bob Boughner in July 2022.
San Jose also parted ways with head athletic trainer Ray Tufts, who had been with the franchise since 1997-98.
Quinn had one season left on his contract, according to TSN's Pierre LeBrun.
His second year behind the Sharks' bench was marred by two separate double-digit losing streaks, including an 11-game slump to start the campaign. San Jose then dropped 12 straight games in the winter.
Sandwiched between those two skids was an admirable 9-7-2 run.
The Sharks suffered through another horrendous stretch after the All-Star break in which they won just one game in 19 outings.
San Jose also became the first team to surrender 10 goals in back-to-back games since the 1965-66 Boston Bruins after being outscored 20-3 by the Vancouver Canucks and Pittsburgh Penguins across two contests in early November.
The Sharks' .287 points percentage is the second-worst mark of the salary-cap era, beating just the 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings (.275).
The last time a team posted fewer than 20 wins in a full 82-game season was in 2001-02 when the Atlanta Thrashers went 19-47-11-5.
San Jose only had one 20-goal-scorer on its roster this season (Fabian Zetterlund), and only one player eclipsed the 50-point mark (Mikael Granlund).
"The roster was what it was," Grier told reporters Wednesday, including NBC Sports. "It wasn't a playoff team by any means. ... There were some things that I don't really want to get into too much that we would have liked to see (be) better. ... I just felt it was what we needed to do."
The rebuilding Sharks went 41-98-25 under Quinn's leadership and traded away several star players during his tenure, including Brent Burns, Timo Meier, Erik Karlsson, and Tomas Hertl.
The 57-year-old coached the New York Rangers for three seasons (2018-21) prior to being hired by San Jose. The Rangers made the qualifying round in the 2020 playoff bubble but were eliminated by the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Sharks have missed the playoffs for five straight campaigns.
With Quinn's dismissal, there have been 16 NHL head coaching changes since the end of last season, per LeBrun.