The fourth team we’ll be looking at is a headscratcher. They’ve always seemed to pack the building in the Bay, but the last few years have not been kind to attendance at Sharks games. You can blame the pandemic, you can blame poor play on the ice, and you can also blame…traffic? That’s one of the issues the Sharks brought up with their current home at SAP Center. During the 2021-22 season, the Sharks average attendance was 12,573 of capacity, which is 71.6% of their arena capacity. But if you watched their games on TV, it rivaled Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres games in number of empty seats. (Remember all attendance statistics are based on announced attendance, which usually is defined as tickets distributed—meaning it’s not necessarily the number of butts in seats.)

What’s this about traffic? Well, there’s a Google project that will be causing traffic headaches for downtown San Jose. So much so the Sharks had placed a few veiled threats about moving. In November 2020, they sent letters to fans about their issues with the project and the hassle it might cause. In April 2021, an email went out with their hints at not being happy about the project and the hassles they’d be facing as result of traffic reductions in front of the arena. But apparently, the city and team settled whatever the beef was with the project, although no details were released about how that happened.

Now, let’s talk about the SAP Center. The arena, originally known as San Jose Arena broke ground on June 28, 1990. It opened on September 7, 1993. The Sharks played their first two seasons at The Cow Palace in Daly City while waiting for the building to be finished. The Shark Tank, as it is affectionately known, is almost 30 years old putting. That puts it on the list of older NHL arenas. The Sharks continuously make updates to the building, the latest being a new video scoreboard set to debut this season.

The building did eventually get a naming rights owner becoming the Compaq Center of San Jose, eventually becoming the HP Pavilion. In 2013, SAP became the naming rights owner of the arena, which made a lot of sense since the co-founder of SAP Hasso Plattner was the Sharks owner since being a charter member of the local ownership who purchased the team from original owner George Gund III in 2002. Plattner is now the sole owner of the Sharks.

While Plattner seems to be committed to the Bay Area, having brought the AHL team to the city. The Sharks recently completed construction and opened a new arena dedicated to their AHL affiliate San Jose Barracuda team. They have also invested a lot of money in improvements to the SAP Center.

But with the drama that’s gone on with the team in the last year; the Evander Kane fiasco, Erik Karlsson not wanting to be part of a rebuild (which the team clearly needs), what happened with Doug Wilson, and that little bit of friction with the city over the Google project; could they think of a move or maybe a sale. The Sharks have signed a deal to keep the team at SAP until 2025, but what happens after that? What if attendance continues to flounder? What if they aren’t satisfied with the Google construction and the changes that it makes to the area? By 2025, they’ll have a clearer picture of what the area is going to be like…maybe change their view on sticking around.