- Joe Thornton headlines the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame class of 2026
- Second Hall in two years for Jumbo after Toronto last November
- Read below for the rest of the class and when the ceremony lands
Joe Thornton is going into another Hall of Fame.
The San Jose Sports Hall of Fame revealed its 2026 class on Tuesday, and Jumbo is the headliner. That makes two straight years he has been enshrined somewhere, after the Hockey Hall of Fame took him in Toronto last November.
He is not going in alone. Leslie Osborne, a national champion at Santa Clara in 2001 and now a co-owner of Bay FC, made the class. So did Brenda Villa, who medaled at four straight Olympics in water polo and won gold in 2012.
Mike Montgomery rounds out the group. The longtime college coach took Stanford to the Final Four in 1998, won Naismith Coach of the Year two seasons later, and eventually led Cal to a share of the Pac-10 title in 2010.
All four get bronze plaques on the SAP Center concourse. The ceremony is set for November, with an exact date still to come.
Thornton’s case never needed much of an argument. He gave San Jose 14 of his 24 NHL seasons and won the Hart Trophy in 2005-06, the same year he led the league in scoring.
The final line reads 430 goals and 1,109 assists in 1,714 games across Boston, San Jose, Toronto and Florida. Another 134 points came in 187 playoff games.
Jumbo called it a career in October 2023, and the Sharks raised his No. 19 to the rafters a year later. Patrick Marleau is the only other player in franchise history with a banner up there.
Take a look at the speech that capped off the last one:
The plaque goes up on the SAP Center concourse this fall, a few floors under the banner that already carries his number.
