The Nemesis
Semper Tyrannus
In honor of Canada Day, a thought just popped into my head:
what would be your all-time Sharks roster of just players of Canadian origin? No Americans. No Swedes. No Fins. No Russians. Etc. Only players hailing from north of the 49th.
Of course the Sharks, like most of hockey, have predominantly been composed of and driven by Canadian talent for their entire history, but limiting things to just Canadians does also exclude a number of highly influential members of the team over the years. Pavelski, Nabokov, Ragnarsson, Irbe, Selanne, Suter, Toskala, Kiprusoff, Sturm, Ozolinsh, Niemi (goalie is one of the hardest hit positions. 4 of the top 7 goalies in Sharks GP are non-Canadian)... The current team would lose Meier, Hertl, Labanc, Karlsson (oh, and Erik too I guess), Simek and several depth guys.
For the purposes of keeping things from getting too pedantic, we are counting being predominantly raised in a country and international competition allegiance as overriding place of birth. So yes, Owen Nolan counts as Canadian. As does Dany Heatley.
Wikipedia has a list that is not up to date (its disclaimer puts it as being current as of 17-18) but it should be good as a starting point for viewing the whole roster in terms of nationality. Plus you can sort by country of origin to make things easier and you can always check other sites' rosters of players from 2018-19 and 19-20 if you want to fill some gaps:
List of San Jose Sharks players - Wikipedia
Also in case anybody even cares anymore, no this doesn't count as one of the "quarantine survival threads". I realize that I'm like 2 months out of date on doing those but it felt like they dropped off in terms of popularity and other discussion is carrying things once again now that hockey is getting back on track. I do have a couple of other time-waster ideas for the off-season but I'll likely be rolling those out more slowly than before to avoid burn-out or excessive work for marginal return. Look for at least one of them this month.
Also yes, in 3 days I probably will do a sequel thread about building an all-american roster which should be a lot more interesting. Or a lot easier given the smaller player pool.
And for anyone who might care, the other significant national holidays for hockey-playing nations are (based on Wikipedia's list of "national days"):
Czech Republic: October 28 or September 28
Finland: December 6
Germany: October 3
Russia: June 12
Slovakia: either January 1 or September 1
Sweden: June 6
Your team should at least be a standard 20 players: 12 forwards, 6 d-men, 2 goalies. You can add the 3 extra skaters and a 3rd goalie if you wish, but that's up to you. You can construct your roster based on pure talent or in an attempt to create a proper facsimile of an NHL depth chart with intended roles for various lines and pairings. That's also up to you. If you're feeling particularly ambitious I also wouldn't be against setting special teams combos too, but again that's discretionary.
So have at it!
And happy Canada Day to the few rest of you who hail from well north of the Tank.
what would be your all-time Sharks roster of just players of Canadian origin? No Americans. No Swedes. No Fins. No Russians. Etc. Only players hailing from north of the 49th.
Of course the Sharks, like most of hockey, have predominantly been composed of and driven by Canadian talent for their entire history, but limiting things to just Canadians does also exclude a number of highly influential members of the team over the years. Pavelski, Nabokov, Ragnarsson, Irbe, Selanne, Suter, Toskala, Kiprusoff, Sturm, Ozolinsh, Niemi (goalie is one of the hardest hit positions. 4 of the top 7 goalies in Sharks GP are non-Canadian)... The current team would lose Meier, Hertl, Labanc, Karlsson (oh, and Erik too I guess), Simek and several depth guys.
For the purposes of keeping things from getting too pedantic, we are counting being predominantly raised in a country and international competition allegiance as overriding place of birth. So yes, Owen Nolan counts as Canadian. As does Dany Heatley.
Wikipedia has a list that is not up to date (its disclaimer puts it as being current as of 17-18) but it should be good as a starting point for viewing the whole roster in terms of nationality. Plus you can sort by country of origin to make things easier and you can always check other sites' rosters of players from 2018-19 and 19-20 if you want to fill some gaps:
List of San Jose Sharks players - Wikipedia
Also in case anybody even cares anymore, no this doesn't count as one of the "quarantine survival threads". I realize that I'm like 2 months out of date on doing those but it felt like they dropped off in terms of popularity and other discussion is carrying things once again now that hockey is getting back on track. I do have a couple of other time-waster ideas for the off-season but I'll likely be rolling those out more slowly than before to avoid burn-out or excessive work for marginal return. Look for at least one of them this month.
Also yes, in 3 days I probably will do a sequel thread about building an all-american roster which should be a lot more interesting. Or a lot easier given the smaller player pool.
And for anyone who might care, the other significant national holidays for hockey-playing nations are (based on Wikipedia's list of "national days"):
Czech Republic: October 28 or September 28
Finland: December 6
Germany: October 3
Russia: June 12
Slovakia: either January 1 or September 1
Sweden: June 6
Your team should at least be a standard 20 players: 12 forwards, 6 d-men, 2 goalies. You can add the 3 extra skaters and a 3rd goalie if you wish, but that's up to you. You can construct your roster based on pure talent or in an attempt to create a proper facsimile of an NHL depth chart with intended roles for various lines and pairings. That's also up to you. If you're feeling particularly ambitious I also wouldn't be against setting special teams combos too, but again that's discretionary.
So have at it!
And happy Canada Day to the few rest of you who hail from well north of the Tank.
