Mike Grier was coy about David Quinn’s future with the San Jose Sharks on Saturday.
There was a reason for that: The Sharks announced today that they’ve let him go.
Quinn, Grier’s first head coaching hire, was tapped in Jul. 2022. He’s gone 41-98-25 in two seasons with the San Jose Sharks, after a 96-87-25 record with the New York Rangers from 2018 to 2021.
But this season in particular, even Quinn has acknowledged, was the most difficult in his 25-plus years of coaching in the NHL, AHL, NCAA, and USNTDP.
The Sharks went 19-54-9, and their .280 Points % was the second-worst of the salary cap era, just ahead of the 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings’ .275.
Quinn was saddled with a questionably constructed team that was also beset by injuries, chiefly to captain Logan Couture for virtually the entire season.
Per NHL Injury Viz, the San Jose Sharks finished with 459 man games lost, second-most in the league.
Regardless, it looks like Quinn will be out a job. There’s no word on the rest of his coaching staff, including assistant coaches Ryan Warsofsky, Brian Wiseman, and Scott Gordon, and goaltending coach Thomas Speer.
Grier also announced that Head Athletic Trainer Ray Tufts was let go.
“I think there’s still evaluation,” Grier said on Saturday, when asked about the futures of the San Jose Sharks and Barracuda coaching staffs. “All of that is part of my job — is to get as much information as I can from the players and exit meetings and staff and talk with [owner Hasso Plattner] and things like that. Our staff, the hockey office staff, will talk once we get all the information in. Talk with Hasso as well, we’ll kind of go from there.”
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