2001–02 San Jose Sharks season
national Hockey League team season

The 2001–02 San Jose Sharks season was the club's 11th season of operation in the National Hockey League (NHL). The Sharks once again set franchise records for points (99) and wins (44) in a season. Most notably, the team won the Pacific Division for the first time in franchise history. Consequently, the Sharks clinched a playoff berth for the fifth consecutive season.
In Darryl Sutter's fifth year as head coach, the Sharks took a massive step forward. For the first time, the team boasted offensive depth in spades, as six forwards (Owen Nolan, Teemu Selanne, Patrick Marleau, Marco Sturm, Scott Thornton and Vincent Damphousse) finished the season with at least 20 goals, while another two (Mike Ricci and Adam Graves) finished with at least 17. While the Sharks' defense nominally regressed from one year earlier, it remained one of the Western Conference's top units; the play of Brad Stuart, Bryan Marchment, Gary Suter and Mike Rathje proved more than adequate during the regular season. The Sharks also benefited from the strong goaltending of starter Evgeni Nabokov and backup Miikka Kiprusoff. Regular season highlights included a 10–2 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets (March 30, 2002) and Patrick Marleau's first career hat trick (April 6, 2002). Evgeni Nabokov also became the first goaltender in franchise history (and seventh in NHL history) to score a goal with an empty-net tally against the Vancouver Canucks on March 10.
The public source identifies “2001–02 San Jose Sharks season” as national Hockey League team season. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jose, Sharks and season.
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This entry incorporates text from “2001–02 San Jose Sharks season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.