The 2001-02 San Jose Sharks are one of GM Dean Lombardi’s favorite teams, of his construction.

“I love my boys in LA,” Lombardi said of his 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup-winning Los Angeles Kings, “but that team I had in San Jose that took Colorado to seven games, I love that team. You look at that team and how we went up against four Hall of Famers in Colorado, if Selanne don’t miss that open net, we might’ve beat them.”

Lombardi was GM of the San Jose Sharks from 1995 to 2003, a tenure that was highlighted by taking the defending champion Colorado Avalanche to the limit in the second round. Teemu Selanne, in a 1-0 Game Seven defeat, missed an open net, denying the Sharks an upset of an Avs squad that featured Hall of Famers Patrick Roy, Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, and Rob Blake.

What did the now-Philadelphia Flyers senior advisor love about the 2001-02 Sharks…and what does that mean for Mike Grier and the current San Jose GM’s quest to bring the franchise their first-ever Stanley Cup? And how does Grier go from playoff to championship team?

“The purpose of the league is to make everybody the same, right?” Lombardi opined to San Jose Hockey Now, about the purpose of the salary cap in the major American team sports. “Their home run would be every team in the league has a chance for the playoffs on the last day of the season, and then, on the last day of the season, the major markets win — LA, New York, Chicago. They want a Super Bowl winner to lose half their defensive line [in the off-season].”

The 2002 Avs were at the end of a near-dynasty, a superpower formed before the salary cap was established in the NHL in 2005. That meant a much taller task for Lombardi’s favorite Sharks squad.

“On paper, we had no business being in the same building as four Hall of Famers, so what was it?” Lombardi mused. “Our culture at that time — you talk about an identity of hard work and toughness — Owen Nolan, Bryan Marchment, Vinnie Damphousse, [Mike Ricci] were nasty as hell, but they were a team. They loved each other. They were a bunch of rebels and dirtbags — that I use as a term of affection.”

So how did the Sharks almost push the Avalanche out of the building?

“The only reason that happened is because our guys were clearly tighter than them,” Lombardi said, “but we couldn’t close that big a gap in [talent].”

“Culture” is a sports cliché, but to Lombardi, it matters more than ever, in Grier’s salary cap era.

“The one thing that the cap tax collector can’t get is your culture. You can’t come in and say your culture is too good, give me 50 percent. If you can get that edge in this age?” Lombardi asked. “Given that there’s no such thing as a Detroit Red Wings or Colorado team with seven Hall of Famers, now having that [culture] element…it’s not just metaphysical, it’s bona fide. If I’m beating you on the culture war, I’m going to have a huge edge in the age of parity.”

So what are the 2026-27 San Jose Sharks? Are they “rebels and dirtbags”? Or something else?

“The biggest thing that’s hard in sports today with the cap situation is a team establishing its identity,” Lombardi said. “You have to decide what type of team you want to be.”

You can see culture as who you are, identity as how you play. They’re obviously intertwined.

Make no mistake, the 2026-27 San Jose Sharks, as evidenced by the expensive additions this off-season of Darnell Nurse, Jacob Trouba, and Mason Marchment, are Grier’s team — this isn’t the team of cast-offs that has characterized his rebuilding teams.

“Tenacious, highly competitive, in-your-face, fast, and hard to play against,” Mike Grier said when he took over in 2022, of the identity that he wanted to establish in San Jose.

“I think that’s the first thing,” Lombardi said. “The GM might say, ‘I want speed, I really want to be good on special teams,’ whatever it is, it has to be consistent, because you have to stay that way. That keeps you from being the kid in the candy store when they’re ready to start acquiring players, acquiring just what’s out there versus waiting for your guy.”

Nurse, Trouba, and Marchment are, no doubt, heavy and in-your-face.

“Obviously, in LA, I wanted to be big and heavy,” Lombardi said. “You might say you want [to be] the old Montreal Canadiens [and] Guy LaFleur — you want to be fast, you want to be that type of team. I don’t care, that’s your decision, but stay with it, and that’ll permeate. What’ll happen is when you have an identity, it has a collective identity, where now every player understands he stands for something, what it means to be a King.”

A classic example of this for Lombardi was 2007 fourth-rounder Dwight King and 2009 seventh-rounder Jordan Nolan. King and Nolan were “big and heavy” foot soldiers who exemplified LA’s identity in their championship campaigns.

“Jordan Nolan and Dwight King do not become the players they did without our development staff. They drilled it into them every freaking day about what you had to do to be a player and contribute,” Lombardi said. “Those guys were instrumental, those role players were critical, but they do not make it without your infrastructure operating at [peak].”

Lombardi’s Kings were rebuilding from 2006 to 2009, and by and large, they did not waste their picks, high and low.

“Get two players every draft that can win in the league, not just play, and you’re going to go to the Hall of Fame. Drafting 18-year-old’s is very difficult, but that’s what we did. We hit it for three years,” Lombardi said. “We were off the charts, but a lot of that was the development people.”

In 2007, the Kings drafted Wayne Simmonds, Alec Martinez, and King. In 2008, they drafted Drew Doughty and Slava Voynov. In 2009, they drafted Brayden Schenn, Kyle Clifford, and Nolan.

All of these players either played meaningful roles in the 2012 or 2014 Stanley Cups, or they were traded for key contributors to the championships.

Eyes on the prize, right?

Grier isn’t trying to build a cult favorite like the 2001-02 San Jose Sharks, he’s trying to emulate Lombardi’s title-winning builds.

And according to Lombardi, culture and identity are the foundation.

“Get your infrastructure together, make sure everybody’s on the same page, and you’ll inevitably make good decisions,” he said.

Where Grier was, taking over the aging Sharks in need of a rebuild in 2022, Lombardi was in 2006, when he took over the Kings.

“Stick with it, because we’re going to put this [culture] in place. It’s going to be in place when our talent comes, and if we have that, we’re going to have a distinct edge. It’s a day-to-day thing, like [Lou] Lamoriello said. Don’t talk culture, do culture. To do culture is a lot of work,” Lombardi said. “That’s something you can establish even when you’re out there getting a top-five pick in the draft, because you’re still acquiring talent and you’re trying to bite your tongue as your building gets a little empty and you gotta deal with this shit and whatever else. It’s that thing on the horizon.”