The Sharks were born due to the desire of the Gund brothers, who owned the Minnesota North Stars to bring an NHL team to the Bay Area. After several negotiations with the NHL board, the Gunds sold the shares of the North Star to Howard Baldwin’s group and were awarded a franchise in the Bay Area in 1990.

After a public poll for the nickname of the new team, the winning name was “Blades,” but the Gunds thought it had negative connotations and they decided to use the runner-up nickname “Sharks.” The nickname was appropriate, because of the high shark population in the Pacific Ocean, especially near the Bay Area. The Sharks played their home games for the first two seasons at the Cow Palace in Daly City. Their coach was George Kingston and they were considered amongst the worst teams in the NHL. Kingston was fired in 1993.

In 1993, Kevin Constantine was hired as the new head coach and the Sharks moved to their new home arena, the San Jose Arena, which is now known as the HP Pavilion. The arena is sometimes called the “Shark Tank”. Under the new coach, the Sharks made the playoffs for the first time. The Sharks pulled of a shock victory over the Detroit Red Wings in the first round. The Toronto Maple Leafs beat them in the second round. The next year they were back in the playoffs, but were unable to make it beyond the second round. They were not able to make the playoffs for the next two years.

In 1997, the Sharks were back in the playoffs under new head coach Darryl Sutter. They did not make it through to the second round. In 2000, their goaltender Evgeni Nabokov was awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy for rookie of the year. The team acquired Teemu Selanne in a trade with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. The Sharks won their first Pacific Division title in 2001 and went to the playoffs to defeat the Phoenix Coyotes in the first round. They lost to the Colorado Avalanche in the second round. The team was bought by a group headed by Greg Jamison that year. Ron Wilson took over as head coach in 2003.

In 2003, the Sharks had their first 100-point season with 104 points. Young players like Tom Preissing, Christian Ehrhoff and Alexander Korolyuk, took the team to win their second Pacific Division title. They made it through the playoffs to reach the conference finals only to lose to the Calgary Flames. In 2006, they were the youngest team in the NHL in terms of average age.