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Now Thornton and Marleau are ‘part of the solution’ in San Jose

Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton

Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton

AP

Turns out it’s all the media’s fault there’s been so much speculation about San Jose trading Joe Thornton and/or Patrick Marleau.

In an interview with NHL.com, Sharks coach Todd McLellan, like his boss did a month ago, tried to clarify the “rebuild” to which the team has apparently committed after blowing a 3-0 series lead versus the Kings in the first round of the playoffs.

“We want to reset the hierarchy and culture in the organization, and that’s really where the term rebuild came from,” said McLellan. “We feel we have a tremendous talent pool. We feel the players that are with our organization are part of the solution and not the problem now. As a staff, we talked about the ability to push and win as much as we can while we get younger, while we adjust the roles a little bit and give some of the younger players more responsibility.

“The term or the word used like that can be confusing at times. I think a lot of people, especially in the media, immediately went to, ‘Well, they’re going to trade Thornton and Marleau.’ That’s not the case. We believe that those two are part of the solution, not part of the problem. That got a lot of play media-wise. That’s not what we were about. We think we have a very good hockey club and we think we need to tinker with a few things and continue to push forward.”

We wrote about this last week during San Jose Sharks Day on PHT. Is the club being forced to do all this clarifying because the media did, indeed, jump to conclusions about Thornton and Marleau? Or, is all this clarifying actually backtracking after the pair of veteran forwards refused to waive their no-movement clauses?

We’ll leave that for you to decide.

Related: McLellan doesn’t rule out stripping Thornton of ‘C’