This probably won’t be the last embarrassing story about the 2023-24 San Jose Sharks.

“The team played primitive hockey,” Alexander Barabanov recently told RG.org in Russian. “You run around without a puck and don’t understand why you need all this. We didn’t even try to keep the puck, but to play for our partner. It was the simplest hockey that kills the player in you.”

It was a miserable season for the Sharks: San Jose’s .287 points percentage was the second-worst of the salary cap era.

Barabanov’s performance hit its lowest point with the San Jose Sharks. In his first three seasons in Teal since being acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs for Antti Suomela at the 2021 trade deadline, KHL import Barabanov had a breakout season, averaging 0.63 points per game. But last year, the 30-year-old winger, who was on his way to becoming an unrestricted free agent, recorded just four goals and nine assists in 46 games in an injury-plagued season.

At the end of the season, head coach David Quinn was fired, but the Sharks also won the first pick of the 2024 draft, which they used to select Macklin Celebrini. Meanwhile, UFA told Barabanov that he had NHL options, but they were not good enough to stay, so he signed with Ak Bars Kazan in the KHL.

Check out Barabanov’s full interview with Sergey Demidov! He goes into more detail about the type of NHL offers he received this summer and what he loved and hated about California.

He also shared his hopes for Celebrini and the rest of the San Jose Sharks’ young players.