Joe Thornton Never Won a Stanley Cup...Why?

Joe Thornton is one of the greatest natural hockey players to ever grace the ice. He was gifted with incredible vision and passing abilities, with the talent to set up goals from ridiculous angles. He is one of the biggest point producers in NHL history and one of a handful of players to win scoring titles for two different teams. With all his talent, size and skill, Thornton had a lustrious NHL career, but even with all of these accolades, he was never able to win hockey's most coveted prize: the Stanley Cup...why?

Even before he was an NHL player, Thornton's legacy in hockey lore was cemented early on. In his junior hockey years, he was a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds on the Ontario Hockey League, a sort-of small market team for Canada's junior leagues. In his second season with the Hounds, Thornton posted 123 points. Only at 18 years old, the St. Thomas, Ontario native was a lock for the NHL. He put small-town Canada on the map not only being from a smaller city in Ontario but playing for a lower-tier OHL team. His points production and physical presence guaranteed him a spot in the NHL. At the 1996 NHL Draft, Thornton was taken Number 1 overall by the Boston Bruins. The 1997 draft is important for a couple reasons: first, Thornton's draft position was a testament to just how good he was, even as a teenager. To say he was already a generational talent was an understatement. The other reason the draft is important because after Thornton was picked No.1, the No.2 pick held by the San Jose Sharks was used on Patrick Marleau, the Saskatchewan-born center who had a natural flair for scoring goals. A player of Marleau's caliber seemed like the perfect complementary player to Thornton. He will come into play later on.

Thornton made the roster out of training camp, but was seeing bottom-six minutes and struggled early on. After breaking his arm in the preseason, Thornton didn't score his first NHL goal until December 3, 1997. Bruins head coach Pat Burns wasn't a fan of letting Thornton play with the big boys, which hurt Jumbo Joe's development. He only scored three goals and had six total points in 55 games played in the 97-98 season. Some people thought maybe Thornton was a bust, that his OHL numbers were part of the lack of competitive junior hockey, but there might have been other factors at play. The following season, there was a significant improvement from Thornton, racking up 41 points in 81 games played and 9 points in 11 playoff games. The improvement was coming from Thornton; the rest couldn't be said about the team around him. In the 90s, the Bruins were in the midst of a cultural crossroads. The loom of the Bruins' success in the 70s and 80s-where brute force and hard-hitting often changed the momentum for the Bs-was phasing itself out and being replaced by more skill-based, offensive-style hockey. Thornton was one of the few players that represented this change. While he was physically gifted, it was his skillset that attracted the Bruins to draft him first overall; the problem was that they didn't have as many offensively-skilled players needed to get the best out of Thornton.

At the turn of the millennium, the Bruins made some serious roster changes. They shipped defenseman and captain Jason Allison to the Los Angeles Kings, making Thornton the new team captain in 2001. Thornton's production improved stupendously, as he posted 107 regular-season points, but when the playoffs came around, Thornton dropped off and the Bruins found themselves on the outskirts of greatness again. The league was turning into a more speed and skill game, something that the early 2000s Bruins hadn't come to terms with yet. Even with Thornton, the Bs struggled to get into full contention for the Stanley Cup. And Jumbo Joe felt the pressure of the expectations to deliver, but with less to work with, he found himself in a kind of limbo. Boston either had to get him some complimentary players, other forwards who could score a much higher volume. The '03-'04 season proved to be even tougher on Thornton after his point production dropped to 73 total and he suffered a grueling jaw injury after fighting New York Rangers center Eric Lindros. His goal-scoring dropped off even more than it had before, and after the shortened '04-'05 NHL season saw a premature playoff exit for Boston, Joe Thornton found himself heading into the '06 season as a free agent. The Bruins weren't sure if they wanted to make Jumbo their franchise player; he had delivered in some ways but unimpressed in others. And it seemed like Thornton wanted to join a team that had a deeper scoring core than the Bruins.

It should be mentioned that during the shorted '04-'05 season, Thornton played for HC Davos of the Swiss Hockey League. He was paired on a line with Columbus Blue Jackets star LW Rick Nash, another No.1 pick that was feeling the pressure from a franchise to perform to their potential but with less to work with. Thornton made it clear he was unhappy with the state of the Bruins, but he signed a three-year contract with the Bruins to avoid free agency arbitration in 2006. The Bruins were struggling despite Thornton posting good numbers (33 points in 24 games) at the start of the season. It was clear that Thornton was too good to stick with a franchise that needed serious roster and coaching reorganization. Thornton's first few years were used trying to get the Bruins back into contention, but they were missing pieces that could truly propel the Original Six franchise toward true success. In 2005, Boston sent a package that included Thornton to a West Coast up-and-comer, the San Jose Sharks. Thornton was united with the guy who was picked after him in the 97 Draft, Patrick Marleau. The first half of Thornton's career was a mix of his offensive prowess at work, but he was picked by a team that didn't know how to transition out of old-style hockey and embrace an offensive game that was highly skill and speed-based.

Thornton's move to the Sharks proved to be a fruitful decision in the first few years. In 2006, he posted a 125-point season, winning the Art Ross Trophy and the Hart trophy for the NHL's most valuable player. But the playoff struggles continued, and the Sharks were bounced in the second round to the Nashville Predators. The same woes in Boston followed him, but he was still a regular-season hero. This became the story for Thornton and the Sharks: first or second-round playoff eliminations by Predators, Detroit Red Wings, and Anaheim Ducks. Heading into the new decade, there was speculation that the Sharks were loading up on serious talent to win a Stanley Cup. In 2009, Dany Heatley was acquired to add to the Sharks scoring depth, creating a partnership between Thornton, Marleau, and Heatley to create an elite scoring line. Yet, the Sharks suffered a tough Western Conference Final loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champions the Chicago Blackhawks. In the offseason, serious overhauls came, including Marleau being stripped of his captaincy and Joe being stripped of his "A." This was the sign of the decline of Thornton's career: he was a point-getter but he couldn't get it done when it seriously mattered. The Sharks' playoff woes kept them as a middling contender, never quite bad enough to finish for a top draft pick and also never quite good enough to win the grand prize.

There is one point in Thornton's career that is often overlooked. He was part of the 2010 Canadian Olympic Hockey team that beat the United States in overtime to clinch the gold medal. Whether he knew it or not, this was the proudest moment of Thornton's career. He was part of a team that included Sidney Crosby, his Sharks teammates Marleau and Heatley, Scott Niedermayer, Martin Brouder, and a litany of other hockey legends. That gold medal signified that Thornton wasn't just a fluke; he was an elite center, his luck in club play was just rotten.

The 2010s were supposed to be a new chapter for Thornton and the Shark, but history always repeats itself. Prior to the 2010 season, Thornton was named the new captain of the Sharks, after Marleau's stripping. He also passed Marleau as the franchise leader in assists and scored his 1000th point later in the 2010-11 season. All these new accolades meant little though, as the Sharks were handed another gut-wrenching elimination to the Vancouver Canucks in the Conference Finals. The following seasons were tumultuous. Thornton and Marleau's future was constantly up in the air; there was serious thought they would be traded. No trades ever came up, at least not yet. In 2012, the Sharks lost to the St. Louis Blues in the first round, and they had to watch their California rivals the Los Angeles Kings hoist the Cup. They had to watch them do it again in 2014. The Sharks front office was becoming increasingly angry that they had all these powerhouses in Thornton, Marleau, Joe Pavelski, Heatley, and Logan Couture and they kept getting eliminated in the first or second round. Jumbo Joe was stripped of his "C" in 2014 and Joe Pavelski was named captain prior to the 2015 season. The first half of the 2010s were teases of greatness for the Sharks: they were on the fringe of being serious Cup contenders but they kept losing and showing the incompleteness of the roster. Thornton had to bear most of the criticism because they kept underachieving despite boasting about having one of the most elite centers in the NHL.

The 2015-2016 season in the most important season to talk about when discussing Joe Thornton's chase for a title. The Sharks were one of the best teams in the West, got past the Kings, the Predators and the Blues en route to the promised land: the Stanely Cup Finals. A date with destiny that Thornton longed for almost two decades, now he was finally here. But fate is a cruel thing. The Sharks were matched up with a resurgent Pittsburgh Penguins, who were riding the hot hands of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, emerging young talent in Bryan Rust, Conor Sheary, and new goaltender Matt Murray. The Sharks hoped their addition of defenseman Brent Bruns would solidify their defense and add scoring from the blueline, and in ways it did. The Sharks took the Penguins to six games and came up short again. Sadly, that was the peak of this Sharks team. All the talent they had and they lost to a team who had much more balance and had stars who performed when it mattered most. San Jose's roster would start to regress seriously after the 2016 Cup run. Marleau departed for greener pastures in Toronto, Joe Pavelski would eventually leave in 2019, and other key core pieces were moved to make room for the addition of Erik Karlsson and his massive contract extension. San Jose stayed in the Cup hunt even after their 2016 loss but never got back to the Stanley Cup Finals. The Sharks made the Western Conference Finals in 2019 but fell to the eventual champion Blues. Thornton rapidly fell off, as age and injuries began to take their toll. While he's still an active player, he is a shell of his former self. He has been relegated to the fourth line, has trouble scoring, and his skating ability has withered exponentially. San Jose is also in serious cap hell, with Brent Burns, Erik Karlsson, Logan Couture, and Marc-Eduoard Vlasic carrying hefty contracts. They are poised to miss the playoffs again, even with the 2020 season halted because of coronavirus.

Joe Thornton's career is the story of a serious hockey legend that couldn't capture the grand prize and get his name on the Stanley Cup. It wasn't from a lack of trying, more so a failure to perform to the best of his abilities in the most clutch moments. Still, he uplifted a struggling Sharks franchise and helped make them into legitimate contenders. There is no doubt his number will be sent to the rafters when he retires, whenever that may be. He claims he can still play, even though he shows serious signs of aging. He can still proudly say he won his Olympic gold medal and was a member of a powerful squad of Canadian hockey legends. Joe Thornton will be remembered as the skilled passer and skater he is, regardless of his lack of a title.