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San Jose Sharks name Joe Pavelski new captain

San Jose Sharks name Joe Pavelski new captain

In order to right the wrongs from their previous season, the San Jose Sharks believed they needed to name a captain.

On Monday, the team announced via its official Twitter handle that Joe Pavelski would wear the captain’s ‘C’ a year after the the Sharks stripped Joe Thornton of the letter and went with all alternate captains.

Thornton and forward Logan Couture will wear the alternate captain’s ‘A’ for the season.

Longtime Shark Patrick Marleau was not a part of the Sharks leadership group. Marleau was drafted by the Sharks in 1997 and was the team’s captain from 2003-09 before the ‘C’ was given to Rob Blake in 2009. Thornton was captain from 2010-14.

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Marleau and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, along with Thornton and Pavelski, all wore an 'A' last season as part of San Jose's rotation. 

Last season the Sharks didn’t make the playoffs for the first time since 2003, and some of the issues with the team’s captaincy played a role. New coach Peter DeBoer said he would make naming a captain a priority and followed through on his word.

“I think I felt part of the contributing factors to last year was distractions and the captaincy was just one of them,” DeBoer said while Puck Daddy was in San Jose two weeks ago. “We want to eliminate all those distractions this year and just start fresh and play hockey.”

Said Pavelski on Thornton having his ‘C’ stripped, “It was extra stuff that was going on … and not even so much that nobody got (the captaincy) just that it got taken away. Because we all felt that pain a little bit,”

Pavelski is 31 years old and was the Sharks’ leading scorer last season with 70 points. He’s coming off years of 41 goals in 2013-14 and 37 last year. Pavelski is a lifelong Shark, drafted by the team in 2003.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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