Joe Thornton, a Career of Highs and Very Big Lows
For over 20 years, Joe Thornton has been playing his Hall of Fame Career with a lot of success, but the greatest success of them all has never happened for him. He was drafted 1st overall in the 1997 NHL Draft by the Boston Bruins, where he played 7 seasons including 3 as the team’s captain. He was the best player on the team and one of the best in the NHL, but the Bruins during the early 2000’s were not a Stanley Cup contending team. They looked like they could’ve been, but in Thornton’s last full season there they choked a 3–1 lead in the first round of the playoffs. To their rivals, the Montreal Canadiens. That’s just embarrassing.
Thornton was frustrated with how the Bruins were doing, and he was starting to perform worse than he had in years past, so in what is considered one of the worst moves in Boston Bruins history, they traded Thornton to the San Jose Sharks for three players that haven’t played in the NHL in almost a decade. Thornton was traded in the middle of the season and ended up being the MVP of the league that year.
Thornton was recognized as a top player in the league for a long time as a member of the Sharks. He has played in over 1600 NHL games, scored 420 goals and 1089 assists for a combined 1509 points. He won a gold medal in the 2010 Olympics as well with Team Canada. So much success, but never achieving the greatest feat in all of hockey, lifting the Stanley Cup above your head as a champion. The Sharks are notorious for being extremely big playoff chokers. They were Stanley cup Contenders for over 10 years, but only made it to the Finals one time. So much playoff failure, with the cream of the crop being when they were up 3–0 on their in-state rival, the Los Angeles Kings, and lost 4 straight games. The Kings went on the win the cup that season.
A career full of great success and great failure, Joe Thornton still plays today with hopes of finally being able to hoist Lord Stanley above his head. After 15 years with the seasons with San Jose, Thornton has signed a veteran minimum deal to play with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Toronto has great young players that are hungry to make an impact in the league, so a veteran presence like Joe Thornton will be great for them. Hopefully they don’t learn from his playoff experience, but his play is fine. The Leafs have been a team of great failures as well for a very long time. Not only have they not won a cup in a long time, but they haven’t been to the Stanley Cup Finals in 52 years. An underachieving player joins an underachieving franchise, a perfect match.
