San Jose Sharks
Exit Interview: Jones Doesn’t Know Yet If He’ll Be Back with Sharks
Will Martin Jones be back with the San Jose Sharks next year?
It’s been three straight subpar seasons for Jones and it’s three years left at $5.75 million per on his contract. He’s a legitimate buyout candidate this off-season.
Jones doesn’t know his future, however – he says he hasn’t talked with Doug Wilson about it yet.
The embattled San Jose Sharks netminder held his exit interview today and talked about his up-and-down campaign – Bob Boughner also discussed what plagued Jones this year.
Martin Jones, on his season:
I played a lot of good hockey this year. Sort of came undone a little bit towards the end of the season. But I did play a lot of good hockey. I think for me, I just need to find a way to be a little bit more consistent.
Jones, on if San Jose Sharks GM Doug Wilson has assured him that he’ll be back next year:
No, I haven’t spoken to Doug yet.
Jones, on if his strong March gives him hope that he’s still capable of a high level of play:
Definitely try to pull some positives out of this year. That was a good stretch of hockey. A lot of stuff did feel really good. We’ll just try and build off it in the summer.
Bob Boughner, on what he’s talked with Jones about recently:
We talked yesterday about inconsistency or lack of thereof. For us, it’s about, to be a legit No. 1 guy in this league, you’re going to give your team a chance to win every night. There are nights that he did that.
But it’s the games where, instead of being a five out of five and a great night [or] an average night is three out of five, there’s too many ones and twos mixed in there.
He understands that; he takes ownership for it.
There are nights that we didn’t play great in front of him as well. So this is not just on Jonesy. But [it’s about] re-establishing his game to know what Martin Jones you’re getting. Every night.
When [Dubnyk] was here, I thought that they worked well with each other and they fed off each other and the competition was good. Maybe a little bit of human instinct, he let his guard down after that, wasn’t as good after Doobie left.
He did do a really good job, I’ll give him a lot of credit. He worked on his conditioning, he worked on a strength, and he came in at way better shape than last year. I told him that there’s still another level there that we’d like to see him get to. But he put the time in, he put the work in, and not for lack of effort or anything like that.
He’s a great teammate. Very coachable. But just like some of the other guys that didn’t have the seasons they wanted, you got to look in the mirror a little bit after the season. We all got to do that moving forward.