SAN JOSE — With all that has gone on since his team’s epic playoff collapse, it’s understandable that Sharks coach Todd McLellan is more than ready for the start of training camp.

“Pretty soon we can start talking about hockey — who made the right play on the ice, who did this, who did that. We need that right now. We’ve had enough of this other crap,” he said.

“The players need that, we need that as a staff and the organization needs that.”

Camp opens Thursday with a team meeting that could be more critical than most after a turbulent offseason and indications of a divided locker room. Beyond that, a lot is up for grabs beyond the usual matter of which rookie will impress.

Who, if anyone, ends up as the captain? Who earns the spot as starting goalie? How will the decision to return Brent Burns to the blue line work out? Are there any emotional wounds that might need more time to heal?

“It definitely has a different feel to it,” veteran forward Patrick Marleau said of what will be his 17th camp in San Jose. “I think there’s a lot of unanswered questions. We don’t know what’s going to take place here, what’s going to happen here. Before, it seemed like everything was pretty much set.”

Some of that uncertainty is by design, the price to pay for blowing a 3-0 playoff series lead to the Los Angeles Kings.

General manager Doug Wilson has said that he wants players to be uncomfortable, that changes were needed in the team’s hierarchy and culture, that everybody comes back with a clean slate and no equity.

All of that already has cost Joe Thornton the captaincy and Marleau his spot as an assistant. Each could earn back a formal leadership role, McLellan has said, but all signs point toward someone from the next generation — Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, Marc-Edouard Vlasic — emerging with the “C” on his jersey at some point.

Hockey teams are quick to close ranks, and the Sharks play down any locker room rift. But Wilson himself opened that door over the summer when he said that several players told him they felt like co-workers, not teammates — a damning, if vague, distinction in a sport where players rely so heavily on each other for collective success.

That notion was reinforced last month during a Montreal radio interview with Larry Robinson, the Sharks’ associate coach who now doubles as director of player development. He noted that Thornton’s sense of humor could rub people the wrong way.

“Joe has a dry sense of humor,” Robinson elaborated last week. “I think different people — probably myself included — feel that making light of certain things is an easy way of breaking the tension. I think that’s what happened in Joe’s case. People maybe take him wrongly for the way he reacts to different things.”

Whatever the reason, McLellan has his work cut out for him. And from his perspective, other players in the room — not Thornton and Marleau — may need to take the extra step to repair things.

“When I hear comments such as ‘we were co-workers, not teammates,’ if I’m a player and I sat within 10 feet of these individuals throughout the year, I’m mad,” McLellan said. “It takes a lot more courage to speak to your teammates when you’re in the locker room and try and fix things than to stand afterward in a closed room without any teammates around and go that route.”

As always, offseason changes have been made. Three veterans — Dan Boyle, Marty Havlat and Brad Stuart — are gone as part of Wilson’s declaration to use younger players in key roles.

The Sharks also signed the NHL’s biggest enforcer — literally — in 6-foot-8, 260-pound John Scott as protection for the younger players the team plans to rely on more. Wilson compares that move to the acquisition of heavyweight Scott Parker before the 2003-04 season, when an unheralded San Jose team reached the Western Conference finals for the first time.

Still, those changes did not meet the expectations set.

Wilson talked in June as if the Sharks were not good enough to be in the Western Conference’s upper echelon. He used the term rebuild for the first time, making comparisons to the Kings and Chicago Blackhawks — teams that missed the playoffs year after year after year before each won two Stanley Cups.

He referred to the Sharks as a “tomorrow” team, and while never mentioning Thornton or Marleau by name, did say that all his veterans needed to decide if they wanted to be a part of that. He said he wanted “players who want to play here, not just live here.”

Both Thornton and Marleau have new three-year, $20 million contracts with no-movement clauses in them, and Wilson’s remarks were widely perceived as an attempt to get one or both players to voluntarily go elsewhere.

Each, however, made it clear he had no interest in leaving.

Wilson would later clarify his remarks. The overall rebuild was a continuation of the “refresh and reset” that began in March 2013 with the trades of Douglas Murray, Ryane Clowe and Michal Handzus. The general manager expects his team to make the playoffs for an 11th straight season.

And, despite what anyone thought, that reference to wanting players who wanted to do more than live here was not a reference to anyone now on the team.

McLellan wants his players to be mindful of the past, but not dwell on it.

“April of last year, I don’t want us ever to forget that, but I don’t want it to be the sole focal point of training camp,” he said. “We’ve got to get back together, we’ve got to re-establish good habits on the ice, off the ice, around the rink.”

For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks.