Joe Thornton on being at training camp without 'C' on jersey: 'It doesn't feel any different'

San Jose Sharks center Joe Thornton, the club's former captain, was stripped of his "C" in the wake of the Sharks' epic choke job in the 2014 Stanley Cup playoffs. Not that the story bears re-telling, but the Sharks coughed up a 3-0 series lead to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings this past spring, ultimately losing in a seventh game that wasn't particularly close. 

On the heels of their most recent devastating playoff failure, the Sharks decided to re-shuffle their leadership group going into this upcoming campaign. Thornton and teammate Patrick Marleau (also a former Sharks captain demoted in the wake of repeated postseason failure) were stripped of their letters, and management has made noises about the team - still clearly among the NHL's elite - entering a rebuilding or retooling phase. 

Thornton, for the moment, isn't particularly miffed about being without his letter.

"It doesn’t feel any different," Thornton told David Pollak of the Mercury News this week. "When I got it put on me it really didn’t feel any different. You’ve still got to go out and work hard. It really doesn’t matter if you have it on or off."

Thornton also addressed the notion he's viewed more as a co-worker than a teammate by his fellow Sharks players.

"You’d have to ask them," Thornton answered tactfully. "Really, I thought a lot of us got along. Obviously when you go out the way we did, people are going to be upset and I think that’s just voicing their opinion. But I think if you’d ask anybody after we’re up three games, I think they would have said we have a pretty tight-knit group."

San Jose's players recently spent a weekend together "bonding" in Lake Tahoe, though the impetus for that trip came from more social veterans Adam Burish and Jason Demers. Whether or not that weekend had an impact, Thornton's teammates defended their former captain on the opening day of Sharks training camp.

"Nothing bothers him," Sharks defender Marc-Edouard Vlasic said of Thornton. "But he’s motivated more than ever to prove (people) wrong. When a ‘C’ or an ‘A’ gets taken away from you, I don’t know how it feels, but maybe you’ve got something to prove. Joe’s a guy that we believe in, and we need him to be his best and he is and he will be."

Sharks coach Todd McLellan seemed reluctant to discuss the topic, but when he did he chose to criticize his own leadership abilities rather than Thornton.

"I’ll talk about the ‘C’s and ‘A’s again today, we’ll beat that horse up a little bit more," McLellan began. "But I’m not going to talk after today.

"I think the two best leaders in the league are (Kings general manager) Dean Lombardi, (Kings coach) Darryl Sutter last year. Simple as that. Every year it ends up being that way. Those two guys led their team to a championship, so Doug Wilson and Todd McLellan are also culpable and they have to do a better job of leading. We’re all responsible for it."

Marleau seemed to be avoiding the heat (in part thanks to the attention lavished on Thornton, surely). He did opine that Brent Burns is better served playing forward than defense, which is pretty obvious.

"I think there might be room for (Burns) to move back up to forward," Marleau said. "I think we’ve got a lot of young D here. He’s a great player. I think he can score 30 or 40 goals as a forward, as well. He’s very versatile. If the coaching staff and management think they can move him back up to forward I think that would be great ...

"I don’t make the lineup.... That’s just my take. I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved him back to forward."