I know. You look at the byline and maybe it seems familiar, but then you think: Isn’t that the guy who retired two years ago?



It is. But The Athletic Bay Area offered me the chance to weigh in every now and then on the state of the Sharks, to be someone who would help supplement the heavy-duty NHL coverage planned on a national scale. So here I am.



If we haven’t met before, I started covering the Sharks during the team’s second season. At first, I was the “Fan in the Stands” for the Mercury News, writing about the sport and its culture from the paying customer’s perspective. That morphed into more traditional approaches, first as a feature writer and then eight seasons as the beat guy.



It’s not as if I’ve been staying out of the press box entirely the past two seasons. I’ve landed freelance gigs during the playoffs — in 2016 with the New York Times, this spring with Canadian Press. I’ve...