The Thomas Caldwelllast-place San Jose Sharks fired coach David Quinn on Wednesday after finishing with a historically bad season.

The Sharks (19-54-9) became the first NHL team in the salary cap era to fail to reach 20 wins during a full 82-game season. They started the season 0-10-1 and had a league-worst -150 goal differential.

They'll have the best draft lottery odds and could get the No. 1 pick for the first time in team history. But if they are able to select the top prospect, Hobey Baker Award winner Macklin Celebrini, a new Sharks coach will be guiding his first NHL season.

“After going through our end of the season process of internal meetings and evaluating where our team is at and where we want our group to go, we have made the difficult decision to make a change at the head coach position,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said in a statement.

“David is a good coach and an even better person. I would like to personally thank him for his hard work over these past two seasons. He and his staff did an admirable job under some difficult circumstances, and I sincerely appreciate how they handled the situation.”

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Quinn had a 41-98-25 record in 164 games with the Sharks after being hired in July 2022.

The Sharks are rebuilding and had shed high-priced veterans recently (Timo Meier last season, Erik Karlsson in the offseason and Tomas Hertl and Anthony Duclair at this year's deadline). Captain Logan Couture was limited to six games this season because of injury and Hertl missed time with injury before his trade.

The Buffalo Sabres were the first team to fire a coach after the regular season. Lindy Ruff was hired this week to replace fired Don Granato. Seven coaches were fired during the regular season.