It’s been 23 seasons since that debut on October 1, 1997. On Saturday at XCel Energy Center against the Minnesota Wild, Marleau was honored for tying Gordie Howe’s record for most games played in an NHL career.

When you are around as long as Marleau is, you rack up some interesting stats, like the one that Sharks president Jonathan Becher shared on Twitter pointing out Marleau has played with 37 percent of the NHL.

Not active players, 37 percent of the players who have ever played in the league’s 104-year history.

Read the full article here.

Sharks fans, mark your calendars: San Jose’s National Hockey League team will be playing in front of paying home crowds again starting April 26.

The team will admit 500 to 1,000 fans to SAP Center for that night’s game against the Arizona Coyotes. The game will be the first since March 8 of last year that the public will be allowed to attend.

“I hope you’re excited,” team President Jonathan Becher said on a video call with reporters Friday afternoon. “All I can think of is, ‘Is it April 26 yet?’ We’re counting down the days.”

The team does plan to ask fans to provide proof of vaccinations or negative test results before entering the arena, Becher said. The Sharks plan to gradually increase the number of attendees. But the team wants to make sure it can do so safely and wants to work through any potential problems first, he said.

“We’re intentionally starting much smaller than we could,” he said. He continued: “Safety is by far our single biggest issue here.”

Read the full article here.

I was inspired to write this post when my friend and colleague, Jonathan Becher, tweeted: “To all of you using the term ‘virtual events,’ please don’t. They aren’t virtual. They are real events that just happen to be taking place online … Just call them events.”

All alumni, parents, and friends were invited to join us for The Business of Sports: At This Stage in the Game. It was an exciting discussion with UVA alumni Jonathan Becher, President of the San Jose Sharks, and Jake Burns, the Executive Vice President, Business Operations for the Washington Nationals! The conversation was moderated by Gabrielle Adams, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology, Director of Executive Education at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, who teaches a UVA January Term class, “Leadership in Athletics.”

Watch the video here.

Our fourth session this year was the first time we spent a whole class talking about a sports team — a new industry for The Industrialist’s Dilemma. With the rise of Esports and gaming, accelerated in popularity by the pandemic, we thought we had the perfect setup: an executive from a major league sports franchise who would be juxtaposed to the CEO of a major gaming company a few weeks later (Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard).

Alas, if the last six years have taught us anything, our best sessions happen when we hear insights that we did not anticipate in our preparation. This year, Jonathan Becher, President of the San Jose Sharks and Sharks Sports and Entertainment, provided lenses on the company’s activities around the many opportunities he sees in the coming decades.

Read the summary of the class here.

San Jose Sharks president Jonathan Becher chatted with The Hockey News owner and publisher W. Graeme Roustan about his time with the team, the lack of a home building due to COVID-19 right now and more.