In the summer of 2017, Joe Thornton was presented with several options as he was about to become an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his NHL career.
Thornton was courted by over half of the teams in the league, which surprised him to some degree. Ultimately, though, Thornton chose to return to the Sharks, signing a one-year, $8 million contract — famously while he was sitting on his lawn mower — to come back to the team he helped make one of the NHL’s best for well over a decade.
Error 0:
“It was nice getting courted by all these teams and I felt bad saying, ‘Hey, I’m going back to San Jose,'” Thornton said at the time.