by Ivan Markarov

SAN JOSE–This is a special day as former San Jose Shark Evgeni Nabokov’s storied career comes to end as he announced his retirement on Wednesday and retired as a San Jose Shark. Nabokov was a goalie for the Sharks from 2000-2010, he was here for that decade and brought a lot of great moments for the Sharks. It was a really great gesture by the organization and to let him retire as a Shark in the city where his family lives and the city that loves him.

Nabokov amassed 697 career NHL games and played 593 of them as a Shark he won rookie of the year in 2001, and careerwise there are not a lot of goaltenders that stay that long with one club in the NHL. He is number 18 all time on the NHL winning list with 293, he also has 50 shutouts. He is one of the best goaltenders in the league in the last 20 or so years. He could arguably be the best Russian goaltender ever.

Nabokov has done a lot in his career it’s great to watch him come retire like this on his own terms. He’s one of the few players in the NHL who achieved almost all the goaltender records on an NHL team as Nabby holds most goaltender records for San Jose. He will be remembered as a great regular season goaltender. He had mixed results in the playoffs but the fans really loved him one of the few players to go out by being called back by a former team and get a day to retire.

We saw the reaction before the game on Wednesday night how much the fans love him as they were chanting “Nabby, Nabby” right after the anthem was over and he got to drop the puck before the game with Sharks representing captain Patrick Marleau and Capitals representing captain Alex Ovechkin. He was really an important player in Sharks history.

With the franchise goalie records that Nabokov holds he will be in the NHL record books for a long time. NHL goaltenders tend to switch teams more regular than Nabokov did he spent the majority of his career all the good years with San Jose. He was a starter for most of the year and he really didn’t have a lot of competition at goal but he outshined a lot of former Sharks goalies like Mikka Kiprusoff or Vesa Toskala.

They had good gaoltending battles and the Sharks ended up trading those other goaltenders to other teams so all in all Nabokov provided a lot of great moments for the Sharks and their fans. In Nabokov’s retirement he wasn’t really surprised the way things went, he thought he could play awhile. He was playing in Tampa Bay and got waved helped the decision to retire the Lighting turned out to be one of his last teams.

Ivan Markarov is the San Jose Sharks beat writer for http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to his podcast below