Dan Boyle Defends Joe Thornton’s Legacy: ‘He can win’

Joe Thornton didn’t win a Stanley Cup — and Dan Boyle doesn’t care.

For Boyle, who won the championship in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Thornton is more than one of the best players who never won the Cup, he’s a winner.

So the star defenseman, in his pre-Legends Game availability on Friday, the night before the San Jose Sharks retired Thornton’s No. 19, spoke up for his teammate’s legacy.

For the majority of his career, Thornton carried a reputation as a player who didn’t win when it most counted. Individually, he usually played at a high level, but his teams just couldn’t get over the hump.

“It’s unfair. It’s a team sport. I think there are certain sports where you have the top guy and you just surround him with a couple of players [and] you can get it done. But in hockey, you can be the best player in the league, and if you don’t have the right group around [you], you can’t get it done,” Boyle said. “We obviously were close for most of the years I was here, but that’s not a knock on Joe. That’s just life in the NHL.”

For Boyle, this is why his favorite Joe Thornton memory is a winning one, even if it wasn’t with the San Jose Sharks.

In the 2010 Olympics, the San Jose Sharks boasted four players on Team Canada, Thornton, Boyle, Patrick Marleau, and Dany Heatley.

While the Vancouver tournament is mostly remembered for Sidney Crosby’s “golden goal” which gave Canada the gold medal on their home ice, Boyle remembers the victory for a different reason: “I remember being specifically happy because [Thornton] took a lot of negative words because he never got to win. It was nice to get [rid of] that. He can win.”

For what it’s worth, Thornton probably didn’t need the 2010 Olympics to prove that at the highest level — Jumbo was also part of Team Canada for both their 2004 and 2016 World Cup of Hockey triumphs.

But except for maybe the Stanley Cup, there’s nothing like Olympic gold.

“I know him never winning the Cup is something that was often talked about,” Boyle said. ”So I was very happy for him to win the last game [at the Olympics].”