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San Jose Sharks Re-Make Appears Complete
by PuckStopsHere on 09/13/09 at 04:16 PM ET
Comments (10)
When the San Jose Sharks lost in the first round of the 2009 playoffs many of their fans called for wholesale changes. The team had done increasingly better in the regular season for the last few years but had no significant playoff success. They won the 2009 President’s Trophy and were expected to do better than a first round playoff loss.
The urge was to trade away key players. Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau were among the candidates to be shipped out of town. That would have been a bad idea for the Sharks. They were not going to get better by subtracting parts. They were highly unlikely to add better pieces in their place if they were trading away their best players.
The opportunity to add to the team came with Dany Heatley. They were able to acquire Heatley from the Ottawa Senators for Jonathan Cheechoo, Milan Michalek and a 2010 2nd round draft pick. Ottawa was now the team trying to get rid of a key piece, as Heatley had publicly requested a trade this summer and that request had not been fulfilled with training camp soon to open. That was likely to cause a distraction for an Ottawa Senator team that had struggled with distractions that had led to failure in the last couple years. San Jose took this opportunity to add a top talent.
Heatley is in the prime of his career. At the age of 28, he is a two time 50 goal and 100 point scorer. Jonathan Cheechoo and Milan Michalek may be good players, but they lack the talent and ability of Dany Heatley.
This trade could go down in history like the Detroit Red Wings acquisition of Brendan Shanahan or the Colorado Avalanche acquisition of Patrick Roy. It could be the apparent final piece that helps propel the San Jose Sharks to playoff success. I do not believe in the “final piece” theory. San Jose is a good team that could win the cup. They are among the teams with very strong shot at the Stanley Cup. With Dany Heatley on the roster, they are an even more likely to win a cup. They are a better team now than they were before the Heatley trade.
It is hard to remake a team that is a solid contender without giving away significant parts. This is especially true in the salary capped NHL. The San Jose Sharks managed to remake their team by adding a significant offensive talent without giving away anybody of that level. It is a job well done by GM Doug Wilson. It might be one of the key moves that are credited with bringing a Stanley Cup to San Jose.
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Tags: Dany+Heatley, San+Jose+Sharks,
Comments
It is entirely possible that they would have won the cup anyway without having made the move at all. Your argument runs into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 09/13/09 at 04:03 PM ET
I’ll keep that in mind in case San Jose wins the cup and you start patting yourself on the back for saying it was one of the key moves that led them to their championship.
You’re the one who said “key move”. Logically, you can’t claim that it “might be a key move” and then call somebody for a post hoc fallacy for running with your reasoning. You’re guilty of the same fallacious thinking when you said it might be a key move, knowing full well that the modifier “might” is being used in the context that you’re implying that it would be one of the key moves in the event of a Stanley Cup victory.
The point remains, the way I interpreted what you wrote doesn’t logically jive with me. You said you don’t believe in “final piece” theory, then basically made the implication that Heatley may be their final piece. Perhaps I need clarification of what your definition of “final piece” theory means. I mean, this isn’t schrodinger’s cat territory here, at some point you have to collapse the entire possibility field and create an opinion one way or another. I figure a guy who’s spent so much time this offseason delving into the absolutes and tangibles of statistical analysis wouldn’t hide behind the concept that a field is too complex to make a conclusion.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 09/13/09 at 04:39 PM ET
The Sharks are a team that just stripped Marleau and Thornton of their C and A respectively.
Now they bring in the problem child Heatley??
Offensively, an improvement, but does it get San Jose past the first round this season?? Time will tell.
Talent wise, the Sharks do get the better player. Hopefully Cheechoo can attain the level he had before as a goal scorer with Spezza and Alfredsson.
Posted by yathehabsrule on 09/13/09 at 04:52 PM ET
JJ
In an NHL with some parity, there are at least a handful of teams that are good enough that they might win the Stanley Cup every season. Naturally only one of them does succeed. The others ran into bad luck, tough opponents and other htings that just didn’t click during that time through the playoffs. That in no way means they could not win the cup with their current team. It merely says that they didn’t that time. San Jose is one such team.
If these teams don’t win a few times in a row people demand changes to ensure that they win the cup (when realistically the team had a 20-30% chance of winning already and no team in the league had a significantly better chance). The first key move made by San Jose was to not take apart the core that they had already built when people wanted change. The second key move is to add Heatley without giving up a piece of their core. It may only increase their chances of winning from 25-35% with Heatley in the lineup (as opposed to 10-25% if they subtracted a key piece in a bad trade where they didn’t add anybody as good as they guy they traded as many demanded).
Reality is probabilistic and not deterministic. The best you can do with any sabermetric analysis is increase your odds. Nothing is certain. The best team does not always win. Upsets occur. Nobody seems to be able to build a really elite team under a salary cap. So nothing one can do will come close to guaranteeing anyone a cup. That is why there is nothing resembling a “final piece”. If San Jose had a 20-30% chance of winning the cup with their roster as it existed last week and with Heatley it is 25-35%, there is no such thing as a final piece. There is no certainty that they can win at all. The idea of the “final piece theory” is all based on fallacy. Any given Stanley Cup winner will have a final roster move (or final key roster move) before they win a cup. To say they won the cup because of that move is very problematic and almost certainly wrong. And if they didn’t win the Stanley Cup because of that move, that move cannot be any final piece. There is no final piece.
Posted by PuckStopsHere on 09/13/09 at 06:05 PM ET
With that explanation, I’m convinced our difference in this matter is in how much weight we put on a final piece argument. i believe that there is a movement that can be considered the “final piece” of putting together a championship winner, but I stop short of putting the ultimate credit on that piece.
I understand now that you say you don’t believe in “final piece” theory as far as people saying things like “Heatley is what put them over the top” and I agree with that. Basically, Heatley may be their final piece, but I recognize that giving him a majority of the credit does a major disservice to the remaining pieces.
I’m not sure if there’s a fancy term for the fallacy of that thinking, but if I had to analogize it, I’d say it’s like saying that the Empire State Building is so tall because of the antenna array on top. There’s a lot of structure underneath that which, all put together, deserves a lot more credit for the building’s ultimate height.
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 09/13/09 at 06:17 PM ET
Final piece is a farce. As a team, each member has to pull his own weight or the team fails. In the last few years, different members didn’t step up and we lost. If Heatley, Thornton and Marleau all pull their weight next playoffs but the rest of the team falls apart, we go golfing early.
How many “final pieces” can San Jose get every year? Thornton? Boyle? Heatley? Let’s just hope this apparent “final piece” doesn’t become a “rest in peace” in the playoffs again.
Posted by Matt Fry from Winnipeg on 09/13/09 at 10:51 PM ET
Final piece is a farce. As a team, each member has to pull his own weight or the team fails. In the last few years, different members didn’t step up and we lost.
Yeah, which is EXACTLY what final piece means.
Posted by Garth on 09/13/09 at 11:52 PM ET
What team in the west can’t beat the sharks in the playoffs?
I would just prefer to have Anaheim or Minnesota embarrass the cocky dorks.
Posted by stoneman from Vegas on 09/14/09 at 01:21 AM ET
Puck & JJ, this is why I love KK. Great discussions.
Posted by Lindas1st from New England on 09/14/09 at 06:20 AM ET
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Provided they make no more key moves and win the Stanley Cup, wouldn’t that make that key move the final piece?
Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 09/13/09 at 03:41 PM ET