David Kirouac-Imagn Images
The San Jose Sharks are one of the ten NHL teams that have never won a Stanley Cup, but their arena is home to banners celebrating some less exciting achievements. That briefly included one commemorating the trophy that’s handed out to the team with the best record in the league, which had to be taken down from the rafters after people noted the franchise didn’t actually win it.
It’s been close to 35 years since the Sharks played their inaugural NHL season, and they’re currently in the midst of the most dismal stretch of an existence that stretches back to 1991.
San Jose will head into the upcoming campaign hoping to snap a six-year playoff drought that began one season after they fell to the Blues in the Western Conference Finals in 2019. The team’s Stanley Cup window essentially slammed shut following the departure of a couple of Sharks legends in the form of Joe Pavelski and Joe Thornton, who were never able to hoist that hallowed trophy during the 13 and 15 years they respectively spent with the team.
No one rocking a Sharks jersey has earned the right to do so since the franchise’s inception, although there have been some promising seasons that ultimately ended in disappointment.
That includes the one and only time San Jose earned the Presidents’ Trophy, which was not claimed during the season listed on the banner that was recently raised at SAP Center.
The Sharks had to remove a banner commemorating a Presidents’ Trophy that the team didn’t win
The Presidents’ Trophy has been presented to the NHL team that racks up the most points over the course of the regular season since it was handed out for the first time in 1986, and 18 of the 32 franchises that currently comprise the league have taken it home on at least one occasion.
That includes the Sharks, who recently updated the banners hanging in their barn with an overhaul that consolidated the six that reflected all the times they’ve finished at the top of the Pacific Division into a single one.
That was hung alongside one commemorating their only Western Conference championship during the 2015-16 season and another celebrating the Presidents’ Trophy they purportedly won the same year—even though it was firmly secured by a Capitals team that got it with the 56-18-8 record that gave them 120 points (22 points ahead of a Sharks squad that had the tenth-best record in the league last year).
Not sure how long it’s been like this, but the Sharks replaced some of their division championship banners with one that lists all of them. The 19 and 12 banners are also on that end of the rink. pic.twitter.com/BKiM5WaraO
— Curtis Pashelka (@CurtisPashelka) September 21, 2025
A picture of that banner was snapped by Sharks beat writer Curtis Pashelka, and according to ESPN, the team had to order a replacement after a bunch of fans pointed out San Jose had actually won the Presidents’ Trophy during the 2008-09 season—an oversight team president Jonathan Becher chalked up to a “printing error.”
Oops.