Peter DeBoer makes a lot of sense as the Sharks’ head coaching hire.

Now let’s see if he can make some sense of a personnel roster that will present a lot of challenges.

DeBoer’s official employment will be announced Thursday. We’ll know more then about why he was tabbed. But in making the move, Sharks general manager Doug Wilson has done at least one smart thing. He has chosen someone with previous NHL head coaching experience. Tossing a rookie head coach into the current mix would have been a risky choice.

To understand why, scan the Sharks’ lineup.

The current roster has seven players age 30 and above, including the team’s most dominant personalities — Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns.

The roster has seven players age 26 and under, including the biggest hopes for the team’s future — Logan Couture, Tomas Hertl, Mirco Mueller and Melker Karlsson.

The other players fall between those two extremes and include a few key names such as Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Tommy Wingels and Justin Braun. But let’s be honest. The Sharks’ prospects for a quick turnaround in the 2015-16 season, which is what’s being promised by Wilson, will be most dependent on the old guys and young guys.

And to connect those dots, it takes a veteran coach who has dealt with all levels of NHL experience and can navigate the tricky motivational speed bumps to massage older egos and kick kids in the butt. Or vice versa.

DeBoer will come to San Jose with open eyes about all of it. He recently spent three weeks in the Czech Republic serving as an assistant coach to Todd McLellan for Team Canada at the world championships. Two months ago, McLellan reached a divorce settlement as the Sharks’ last head coach. He surely briefed DeBoer on the team’s culture, pluses and minuses.

McLellan, the most successful coach in Sharks franchise history, was given a tough mission last season when Wilson wanted him to assertively integrate the new with the old but still reach the postseason. And of course, for seven seasons, McLellan pulled every lever and pushed every button to get the team over the Stanley Cup hump. But never did. So how will DeBoer’s approach be any different? We won’t know for sure until the team takes the ice this autumn. But we can look for clues.

At DeBoer’s last coaching stop, three-plus seasons in New Jersey, he initially emphasized an aggressive forechecking style. Then he switched to a more conservative system after the Devils lost offensive stars Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk.

The second style flopped. DeBoer was fired by New Jersey last December after the team’s slow start — although their record after his exit was not much better. Devils’ fans were convinced he was an idiot because among other things, his team went the entire 2013-14 season without winning an overtime shootout.

That 0-13 record in the skills competition would seem to be more of a personnel issue than a coaching issue. But if there’s a legitimate warning flag in DeBoer’s resume, it is that in his six full seasons as an NHL head coach, he has reached the playoffs only once.

In fairness, DeBoer made that one trip count, reaching the Stanley Cup finals in 2012 with the Devils before losing in six games to the Los Angeles Kings. Also in fairness, DeBoer coached his first three NHL seasons in Florida with the Panthers, the NHL’s version of trying to extinguish a tire fire while making line changes.

In any event, DeBoer was regarded as one of the top coaching candidates on the market this summer, especially after McLellan and former Detroit coach Mike Babcock signed their new deals in Edmonton and Toronto. And at least the Sharks didn’t make a strange reach for their new man, as the Philadelphia Flyers just did by hiring University of North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol, a man with zero previous NHL experience.

DeBoer is also a college man, but in a more practical way. He has a law degree. So if nothing else, he should be good at mediating locker room disputes. Also, if he can get this Sharks roster all on the same page and back to the playoffs, he can negotiate himself a big raise next offseason. Because he’ll deserve one.

Read Mark Purdy’s blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/purdy.