Sharks GM Mike Grier blasts fired Russian scout Igor Eronko

It's been a truly miserable season for the San Jose Sharks, who are dead last in the Western Conference with a record of 16-44-7. The only silver lining is that they will have a prime opportunity at winning the Draft Lottery, but as we've seen in years past (think Detroit Red Wings in 2019-20), the team with the worst record in the League isn't guaranteed anything when it comes to Draft Lottery luck. 

In the meantime, Sharks general manager Mike Grier has made the decision to part ways with a member of the organization's scouting staff, as Igor Eronko was terminated from his position as Russian head scout. And as Grier put it, Eronko wasn't doing what was asked of him. 

“Igor didn’t meet the standard. For whatever reason, he wasn’t seeing games and wasn’t doing what we were asking of them. So we felt it was best to part ways with him,” Grier told San Jose Hockey Now. 

“We let him go, basically, because he wasn’t fulfilling his duties.”

Grier then exposed that Eronko was given several warnings by the team that went unheeded, hence his termination.

"We gave him several warnings about getting his reports in," Grier explained. "Cleaning up his lists. And seeing games. You can’t scout or get a good feel of the players if you’re not at the rinks. For whatever reason, he was given plenty of notice that he needed to improve in this area, and he didn’t.”

"It’s obviously unusual to fire a scout not even a full year into his or her employment."

“It’s disappointing. He was an assistant GM with Omsk there. We felt like he had a pretty good in with the league and knew some of the players and young players and had scouted some of them. So, we thought it was a good fit,” Grier said about the initial hire, announced last August. “But ultimately, the situation that Russia is in, when you can’t really be over there and be hands-on and kind of follow people, they can kind of do what they want. He chose to do it half-heartedly. That’s not what we’re looking for.”

That's just an additional portion of what has gone wrong for the Sharks this season in what has been an abysmal campaign that harkens back to their expansion season record of 11-71-2 in 1992-93. 

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