SAN JOSE, Calif. — After two sleepless nights, Ryane Clowe is thinking about how to fill several weeks of free time he neither wants nor needs.
It’s a problem facing most of the Sharks, whose embarrassing first-round exit from the playoffs has cleared their schedules — and sent general manager Doug Wilson into a fury that might last all summer.
“We figured we’d make a run into June and then see what happens,” said Clowe, who scored one goal in six playoff games. “And then all of a sudden, you’ve got a month here when you don’t know what to do.”
Wilson has plenty to do, but he’s trying to wait until he calms down before he decides where to start. The Sharks’ six-game loss to eighth-seeded Anaheim flattened every good feeling from San Jose’s franchise- record 117-point regular season, which included 53 wins and the first Presidents’ Trophy in team history.
“The frustration is overwhelming,” Wilson said. “We owe an apology to our fans and our ownership. . . . Everything will be evaluated. There’s nothing that’s off the table. This is going to be a tough, painful summer, and it should be.”
Wilson realizes he must consider demolishing a team he thought was built to win the Stanley Cup. Instead, it fell apart in the early rounds, just as it’s done in four straight seasons — and the problems appear to be too big to solve with minor tweaks or the additions of several championship-winning veterans.
“I would have bet everything I had that this wouldn’t happen to us,” said Jeremy Roenick, who will wait a few weeks before deciding whether to end his 20-season NHL career.
Wilson thought hiring Detroit assistant Todd McLellan as his new head coach and adding veterans Dan Boyle, Rob Blake, Brad Lukowich and Claude Lemieux would change the Sharks’ postseason attitude.
Instead, San Jose lost its first two playoff games at home, turned in a miserable effort in the pivotal Game 4, and got emphatically closed out by the postseason-tested Ducks on Monday night.
Wilson made few specific predictions about the Sharks’ future, saying he needed time to evaluate what went wrong — “to conduct the autopsy,” he said grimly — before deciding who will be traded, released or simply browbeaten into improvement.
