Whoa whoa time out, are people really trying to argue what Larionov did for the Sharks? The sharks that I recall in my old man brain now actually only won..... THREE games the entire year when Larionov was not in the line. Also people need to remember at the beginning constantine was hesitant to even let larionov do the 5 person unit he wanted to with garpenlov, makarov, ozolinsh, norton. I think people forget once larionov was in the line up, and ONCE constantine agreed to play the 5 man line, if you look at the stats and im sure ive posted them before, maybe on my youtube at the time when I was still more into hockey, the sharks were the third best team that year only below new york and I forget who else. People really under estimate how much larionov did for that team, and I Think really forget all the drama that went on behind the scenes in the locker room the next year just because of how much pull he had. Which is one of the reasons people like to think that the sharks dismantled so much after that to stop larionov from having so many guys behind him, they even took away his assistant captain role because of this. There was a lot of drama back almost to the point that it makes me wonder if larionov might have had some shady doings himself cuz I remember when errey was traded to the wings and then larionov was on the wings with errey there but I never remember hearing about anything between them. But whatever the case the organization had a lot of drama going on, and larionov was part of that. But its also a fact that the sharks were actually a good team when he was in the line up and all the stats go to prove that as well. Irbe gets a lot of credit, and he should, but people really seem to under estimate just how good larionov was as well at that time.
