San Jose Sharks officially name Bob Boughner head coach

The San Jose Sharks have officially named Bob Boughner as the team’s head coach.

The San Jose Sharks officially announced what had already been expected for months at this point. And that is that interim head coach Bob Boughner will be sticking around as the team’s full-time bench boss.

Boughner becomes the ninth full-time head coach in Sharks’ history after taking over for Peter DeBoer back in December. Ultimately this move doesn’t come as a surprise, even if it does alienate a portion of the fanbase.

DeBoer was fired on December 11th of 2019 after a 15-16-2 start to the season. The Sharks entered this past season with Stanley Cup aspirations after falling just short of a Western Conference championship the previous season.

Unfortunately, those aspirations quickly faded away and the Sharks hoped the move to fire DeBoer would jumpstart a stagnant team. Evidently it did not as the team finished just 14-20-3 under Boughner — worse than they did with DeBoer leading the way.

That said, there were a few reasons for the Sharks’ failures under Boughner.

San Jose was subject to a string of awful injury luck with the likes of Logan Couture, Tomas Hertl, and Erik Karlsson all suffering serious injuries that knocked them out of action.

Combine this with a Sharks team that was already playing poorly, to begin with, and Boughner was doomed from the start. But for what it’s worth, general manager Doug Wilson clearly liked what he saw from the ex-Florida Panthers coach and decided to retain him.

The San Jose Sharks are allowing Bob Boughner to bring in his own assistants.

Along with Boughner, the likes of Rocky Thomspon and John Madden have been named associate coaches with the former overseeing the defensemen and power play and the latter in charge of forwards and the team’s penalty kill.

Evgeni Nabokov will return as the Sharks’ goaltending coach while Dan Darrow will remain in his current role as the team’s video coach. But for the most part, Boughner will go into next season with his own staff — something he didn’t have the luxury of last season.

Will it work? Who knows.

Wilson certainly has his work cut out for him this offseason with a number of key unrestricted free agents to make decisions on including veteran Joe Thornton. The 2020 NHL Draft is also coming up and the Sharks own two picks inside the top-34 selections.

Wilson’s work is far from over. But at least now, there is officially clarity with the coaching staff.

Bob Boughner is staying, confirming what we pretty much all already knew.