No team knows better than the San Jose Sharks how difficult it is to reach the Stanley Cup Final. From close calls to crushing disappointments to teams with unrealized potential, the Sharks had to suffer a lot before they could earn the opportunity to play for a title.

This team in particular just came through one of the most tumultuous seasons in franchise history. The 2014-15 campaign had a little bit of everything going wrong. There was Joe Thornton, stripped of the captaincy, barking that general manager Doug Wilson needed to "shut his mouth" after Wilson spoke candidly about the decision to take the "C" away from Thornton. They missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade as well. Then the bench completely overturned after a mutual parting of ways with longtime head coach Todd McLellan.

San Jose was an absolute mess last year. This was a team with no identity and one that looked like it had lost its way. However, through a series of events -- some that occurred well before this playoff run ever started -- they were able to get back on the road to redemption and, now, the Stanley Cup Final.

Here are five key moments that got them here:

1. January 24, 2014

Before you can even start to talk about the Sharks' run, you have to understand the moment that this team's core became essentially set in stone. Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau signed three-year extensions on this date in 2014 and those deals included full no-movement clauses.

Why is that important? What happened three months later is why. The Sharks blew a 3-0 series lead in the first round to eventual champion Los Angeles Kings (sorry, Sharks fans, we have to keep bringing it up because it's important) and were out of the playoffs. That series could have easily defined this franchise for years to come, but it didn't because GM Doug Wilson had no recourse to trade either of the biggest pieces of their core at the time without their say so.

And Wilson even hinted at the potential of moving pieces and seemed to strongly suggest Thornton and Marleau would be among those he'd consult with about shipping out.

Here's what Wilson told local media (via CSN Bay Area) a little over a month after the series collapse against the Kings:

"I don't want to put a name on you, but you're a guy that hasn't won, had a long career, you want to go win. You might say, 'this doesn't fit for me.' I may go to the next guy who has won a Cup. He says, 'I've won a Cup, I want to be here, I want to be part of it. That's an interesting part of my process, and I may want to be a coach in the future.' I may want to have him because he just fits.

"... I've had a lot of calls, a lot of people at the GM meetings, they know where we're going. We now become a tomorrow team. When you spell that out, it does create a response."

Thornton and Marleau didn't want to move, though. They had their no-move clauses and they intended to use them. They didn't budge.

So Thornton was stripped of his captaincy that offseason, Wilson did very little to improve the roster and the team failed to even reach the playoffs in a tumultuous 2014-15 campaign. That led to the departure of Todd McLellan, the arrival of Peter DeBoer and because he still couldn't move Thornton and Marleau, Wilson got back to adding pieces last summer that suggested the Sharks were ready to contend again.

When Wilson called the Sharks a "tomorrow team" in the summer of 2014, he probably didn't think tomorrow would arrive two years later. It all goes back to those contract extensions and now Thornton and Marleau have their first crack at the Cup.

2. Peter DeBoer is named head coach

There's little doubt that Todd McLellan was and is a good coach. He had some great Sharks teams that, with a bounce here or there, could have reached this stage of the playoffs at some point. They never did. McLellan appeared to want out at the end of last season and the team wasn't going to stop him from leaving. The team said they "mutually agreed to part ways" after seven seasons. It was amicable and as we know now, necessary.

Peter DeBoer was not the obvious choice to replace McLellan in one of the deepest free agent coach markets in recent memory. There were a lot of options with Stanley Cup winners like Dan Bylsma and Marc Crawford, and some up-and-coming coaches that had a lot of buzz. But the Sharks went with DeBoer, who was fired 36 games into the previous season by the New Jersey Devils after a horrible start.

He had one playoff appearance as a head coach in seven years between the Devils and Florida Panthers. His one trip was a pretty successful one, though, as he led the Devils to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final in his first year with the club.

The Sharks were able to give DeBoer a roster with more talent than he had ever had previously. The results were not immediate, but as the season wore on, the team improved. Now as they reach the Stanley Cup Final, you see the value in DeBoer. His player deployment and line-matching skills have been on point, the Sharks always seem to bounce back from a loss after making key adjustments and the players seem to have bought in to what he's selling.

Have you ever seen a Sharks team look more confident in the postseason? The biggest difference in the organization is the head coach.

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The Sharks' playoff run couldn't have gotten off to a better start. USATSI

3. Sharks eliminate Kings in Game 5 on the road

What's the best way to exorcise your playoff demons? Ousting your regular postseason tormentor in relatively short order probably does the trick. The interesting thing about their series-clinching win against the Kings, aside from the fact that it was the Sharks' third road win of the series, is that they blew a 3-0 lead in the second period.

At that point, the game had the feeling of "here we go again." But then the Sharks came out and absolutely shut the Kings down in the third. In the process, they scored three goals to earn a 6-3 win and punch their ticket to the second round.

That's the kind of win that showed the Sharks were probably a bit mentally tougher than they had been in previous years. It also seemed important that their run this year went through the Kings considering how important the series in 2014 proved to be for the path this team ended up on.

4. Sharks dominate Predators in Game 7

Those pesky Nashville Predators were a tough team to put away. After the Sharks got out to a 2-0 series lead, the Preds won Games 3 and 4 on home ice. When the Sharks won Game 5 at home, they had a chance to end the Predators' season in Game 6 as the game went to overtime. Nashville survived, though. Again, the Sharks' postseason history came to the forefront as the series went to a seventh game.

As if to thumb their nose at the notion that anyone would even bring up the past after what they did in the first round, the Sharks put together one of their most dominant games of the postseason. They absolutely crushed Nashville with a 5-0 win in Game 7. Suddenly the story changed from being about the Sharks' history and became more about how they just weren't the same old Sharks.

5. Joe Pavelski silences the Blues in Game 5

While the clinching game was impressive as well, the Sharks had the Western Conference finals won in Game 5. It was actually one of the more tightly contested games of the series, but Pavelski took things over with goals to end the second period and open the third period.

The first goal came on the power play off of a perfect feed from Joe Thornton. Pavelski one-timed a fluttering shot that found the top corner of the net with just 1:27 to play in the period. That goal was made all the more meaningful just 16 seconds into the third period when Pavelski used one of his patented midair deflections to put a puck past Jake Allen to put the game firmly back into San Jose's control.

That goal made it 4-3 and took the wind right out of the Blues' sails. They never really seemed to recover from that as the Sharks went on to win Game 5, 6-3, before dominating the Blues in a 5-2 win in Game 6 back at home.

Those two goals gave the Sharks captain one of his signature moments as a member of this franchise. For good measure, he scored the goal that opened the scoring in Game 6 as well. Having a scorer like Pavelski who repeatedly comes through in moments like these has been huge throughout the postseason.