It is entirely possible that they will come back and credit the Anaheim Ducks as giving them the initial shock needed to get on the right track for Stanley Cup success.

I hear that same song every year.

The Sharks need someone tough enough to stand in front of the goalie and take the pounding.

Posted by w2j2 on 04/25/09 at 06:22 AM ET

The reason the Sharks continually underperform in the playoffs has been repeated over, and over, and over.

1) They don’t have players who score traffic goals.

2) They don’t have clutch goaltending.

3) Every player and coach on the roster is 100% aware of points 1 and 2, and it impacts every facet of their game once the playoffs arrive, whether they ever admit it or not.

It’s that simple.  It will always be that simple.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/25/09 at 07:19 AM ET

As an addendum, the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior, yet expecting different results.  If the Sharks go into next year with the same guys in the same roles… they’ll experience the same results.

Now, maybe all the Sharks really want to do is get a 100 points or so and win a round in the playoffs every now and then.  Maybe someday if they make the playoffs the matchups will be so favorable they’ll get to a Cup Final.

If they ever run into a legitimate playoff club, though, they’ll get smoked just like they’ve been smoked by such clubs each of the past few years.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/25/09 at 07:24 AM ET

This team is demonstrably the best Sharks team ever.  They have a team that definitely could win in the playoffs.  This team is significantly better than the teams of years past - they have made considerable strides improving their defence.  The previous year’s Sharks teams were never reaosnably considered stanley Cup favorites.  They were always a team that might be able to take a run and for a few years never did - at least not past the second round.  It is impossible to look at any one Shark team (before this year) and say that is the one that should have won.  They were never seriously in the running as the best team in the league.

This year they have run into a hot Anaheim team.  Anaheim finished the season with a 10-3 record to finish the season.  They had to do that merely to get into the playoffs.  It was obvious that anaheim would not be an easy opponent for any team.  The potential for an upset was very strong regardless of who they played.  They happened to meet up with San Jose and things have gone roughly according to prediction.  Anaheim has played well and certainly looks like an upset is possible.  Sometimes that happens.  A very good team can lose in a short playoff series.

The worst thing to do as a result of that is to blow the team up.  You don’t decide to trade away some of the key players.  Obviously you make moves to improve the team if you can - but it is awfully hard to improve a President’s Trophy winner.  It is much easier to make things worse.

Hockey is not a deterministic game.  If you do the same thing multiple times you will get different results.  If they could replay this season hundreds of times under the same circumstances we would see many different Stanley Cup champions.  San Jose would win their fair share - it is quite possible they could win more than any other single team in the league.  Obviously we don’t have that perspective.  What we see is one of the many possibile outcomes of the season.  It may be a probable one and it may be an improbable one. 

We have 82 games that show San Jose is a very good team.  We have four that are making us question it.  From a signal to noise point of view, the 82 games clearly tells a bigger story regardless of if they are playoff or regular season. 

San Jose could trade Joe Thornton or they could trade Patrick Marleau this summer.  Given the circumstances, it is most likely those trades will make the team worse.  That is not the goal.  It would be a stupid short-sighted kneejerk reaction.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/25/09 at 07:43 AM ET

As opposed to the overwhelming brilliance keeping a core of players together who have experienced hardly one iota of postseason success in almost half a decade’s worth of attempts?

Yeah, outstanding reasoning there, Puck.

As a Wings fans, I sincerely hope the Sharks organization completely and totally agrees with you.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/25/09 at 08:39 AM ET

Puck:

I agree with you both.

They are a very good team in the 82 game pre-season.

However, they need that Tomas Holmstrom / Ryan Smyth guy to score in the playoffs.

Posted by w2j2 on 04/25/09 at 08:46 AM ET

As a Sharks fan I can tell you Puck that you are so so wrong. Forget about who was hot or cold going into the playoffs, thats so much garbage. Which team was the hotter team going into the playoffs Columbus or Detroit? Which team had a better record over their last 10 games? Which team was hotter going into the playoffs St. Louis or Vancouver? That arguement is a lazy mans arguement. Last year the Sharks had won something like 17 of their 18 games going into the playoffs and it still took the HOTTEST team in the NHL 7 games to defeat Calgary only to get blown out in the next round by Dallas.

The reason this team struggles exactly the same reason that HockeyHD stated earlier.

1. No one wants to get the tough goals, or stand in front of the net. This Sharks team loves the primiter shots. Watch are the Ducks go up the middle and its wide open, while the Sharks travel down by the boards, dump the puck and hope like hell to get there first. There is no will to get those tough goals.

2. Goaltending has always been an issue with the Sharks. The Great Nabokov with kick saves that give up juice rebounds and the lousy glove hand. Nabokov is an average goalie at best, he’s not a goalie that can save a team or win a series on his own.

3. Ownership/Management we have an ownership group that is more concerned about PC and the bottom line then winning a cup. Yes they spent to the cap limit, but that does nt give them a pass for signing the wrong type of players. Sharks management loves to sign NICE GUY type of players, and players who are just plain great with the fans. Who cares about that, give me 23 nasty players and a stanley cup anytime. The players follow the liase faire attitude of our management group and it shows on the ice. Management does nt care so why should the players?

Posted by fullofpuck on 04/25/09 at 11:31 AM ET

For the record, San Jose lost their last two games of the season in 2007/08.  They had an 11 game winning streak from mid Feburary to mid March, but since the season ended in early April that momentum was gone.

As for Anaheim, we have a team that had played very well down the stretch - and unlike San Jose of last year did not let up just before the season ended - and they are also a team two years removed from a Stanley Cup victory with a very ismilar core of players.  Those two things make them so dangerous.  There is no team that would have easily beaten Anaheim right now.  They would be locked in a tight series with any opponent.  San Jose is the unlucky team that gets to face the Ducks and not St Louis or Columbus.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/25/09 at 11:42 AM ET

I strongly reject any “missing piece” theory which you are trying to force onto San Jose.  Teams have found a multitude of ways to win games with and without many different styles of players.  The idea that a team would win if only they had player X is usually wrong.

There are very few player X types out there - no matter how you choose X.  Most of them are not available.  Those that are are likely on the downside of their careers and only available if you overpay for them.  Chasing players you will have to overpay for will only make the team worse.  San Jose could go down that road if they are not careful and that would make them less likely to win the cup in the future.

The only way to make a team better is to get more good players who will play well.  It doesn’t matter what style they are as long as they can play well for you.  That should be any team’s goal- to get more good players that will play well.  If San Jose parts with a key player to get what they view as the “missing piece” they will likely be running backwards away from that goal.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/25/09 at 12:24 PM ET

all the reasons for the sharks meek playoff play mentioned here boil down to one thing: lack of heart.  that starts with the captain and other leaders of the team, i.e. thornton and marleau.  clearly the coach doesn’t have a lot of control over it, as the sharks have had some good coaches the last couple years.

sharks are the biggest finesse team in the league, and as long as marleau is captain i don’t see how that’s going to change or how it’s going to win them anything in the playoffs.

Posted by bitterguy from san francisco, ca on 04/25/09 at 12:36 PM ET

San Jose is the unlucky team that gets to face the Ducks and not St Louis or Columbus.

Yes.  Poor, ‘unlucky’ San Jose.  Reeally, who could ever have imagined that the same team that’s struggle dto play well in the postseason against a solid playoff club would do so again?  What a shocker.

I strongly reject any “missing piece” theory which you are trying to force onto San Jose.

It’s not a single missing piece, Puck.  That’s a disingenuous obfuscation on your part.  It’s the absence of an entire type of piece.  One gritty forward wouldn’t make a huge difference one way or the other for San Jose.  For them to be successful in the playoffs they, among other things, have to get tougher all over the roster, not just in one specific roster spot.

It doesn’t matter what style they are as long as they can play well for you.

That’s foolishness, especially in a cap environment.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/25/09 at 12:38 PM ET

To be honest and Fair puck the Sharks had a 20 game streak of non regulation losses at the end of last season, and in fact if you factor in the the 2 april games the Sharks regulation record over the last 22 games was 16-2-4, not exactly going into the playoffs coasting right. But you still never answered the question which team had the better record over the last 10 games Columbus or Detroit? See this throws your theory out the window and its the reason you wont answer that question.

As for your 1 player quote, I didn’t see anyone state the difference was just one player, maybe I missed that somewhere. I believe I gave 3 reasons for the Sharks post season failure not one. It would be nice if you try and re-read the entire post, not just 1 part of the post.

Again 3 reasons

1. No one (that means all 23 players) wants to mix it up and get the tough goals or stand in front of the net. It takes more then 1 or 2 players to buy into this, it takes the entire team. Too win in the playoffs everyone must not only play as a team, but play determined.
2. Goaltending, Now yes this is an individual 1 person issue, but as far as I can tell only 1 person is allowed to play goal at any one time.
3. The Management issue is irrefuteable.

Posted by fullofpuck on 04/25/09 at 01:47 PM ET

You are misrepresenting my point.  My point is that the team that wins a hockey game on any level is almost certainly the team that has the players who play the best in that game.  The only way for San Jose to improve is to get more of those players.  It doesn’t matter if they happen to be “skill” players or “grit” players or offensive players or defensive players.  They just have to be good players who play well.  San Jose has a good group of players who can do that. 

Anaheim does too.  Anaheim is a team that is very hot right now.  I dont know that they will make a deep playoff run.  They may not go any further this year than San Jose did last year.  Right now Anaheim is playing very good hockey.  They have lots of players who have been the best players in their playoff games so far.  They would be tough for any team to beat right now.

San Jose is unlucky to get to face them as an eighth seed.  The 6th and 7th seeds are far weaker teams.  That happens sometimes.  For San Jose to increase their chances in the future (should the lose now) they need more players who might be the best player in any given game.  The style of play of those players is not relevant.  What matters is that they are the best players on the ice at the right time.  Nothing can guarantee that any group of players will be that (that is why they play the games), but the more potential best players the better a team’s chances will be.

If San Jose wekaens their core to get that guy who stands in front of the net to score ugly goals they reduce their chances of winning in the future.  If they can get that guy without weakening their current core it helps them.  It would help as much for them to get another such player who plays a different style also.  And a salary cap has nothing to do with it.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/25/09 at 02:09 PM ET

The only way for San Jose to improve is to get more of those players.  It doesn’t matter if they happen to be “skill” players or “grit” players or offensive players or defensive players.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  Puck, the NHL is a capped league.  You cannot just stockpile infinite offensive talent until you reach a point of critical mass where sheer talent carries you past any opposition.  Even prior to the cap it was impossible to create a sufficient talent gap to just blow past everyone.

Detroit had tons of talent over the Ducks in 03-4 and got their brains kicked in by a tougher team willing to play harder.

Right now Anaheim is playing very good hockey.

Enh.  Right now they are playing much better playoff hockey, in that they a) play tough, b) have a goaltender who isn’t giving up bad goals at crucial times and c) are pretty sure they can count on points a and b to be there night in and night out.

San Jose is outshooting Anaheim 140ish to 99 through 4 games.  Even in the game they won the Sharks gave up a lead three times.  The Sharks are a boxer with a glass jaw.  He may have a good punch, and even that’s debateable, but he can’t take one.

The corrolary I would draw is the 2005-6 Wings team that got rolled by Edmonton in round 1.  After that debacle the Wings noticeably changed their offensive system, let Shanahan go (intentionally or not), bid adieu to Yzerman, Williams, and Legace, and took off from there.  They got ‘greasier’, to coin one of Babcock’s phrases.  They got better playoff goaltending.  They got pretty sure they were both ‘greasier’ and had better playoff goaltending.  It sort of helped.

Nobody is saying the Sharks need to dump their top 4 forwards and start from total scratch… but the current mix just isn’t working, at least if playoff hockey is the standard against which the Sharks ought to be judged.  IMO I don’t think it would be at all unreasonable for the Sharks to look to move at least two guys out of their current mix in the top 6.

Thornton, Marleau, Cheechoo and Michalek were all total nothings in the series to date.

San Jose is unlucky to get to face them as an eighth seed.  The 6th and 7th seeds are far weaker teams.  That happens sometimes.

So, unless SJ gets a patsy in a playoff round they’re in trouble?  Golly, that almost sounds like it illustrates my point.

Puck, since the lockout the Sharks have beaten exactly two teams in the playoffs: The Flames once and the Predators twice.  That’s it, that’s the list.  Come on, give me the watermark San Jose playoff success story that really illustrates how that team has a dore of players which can go deep into the postseason, because their list of failures is moderately impressive:

2005-6.  Lost game 3 in OT after winning the first two vs. Edmonton in the second round.  Proceded to fold like cheap tent and lose the next three by a combined score of 14-6 and go out in 6.  After winning the first two.

2006-7: Up 2 games to 1 in second round against Detroit.  Loses game 4 at home in OT.  Folds like cheap tent and loses next two games by a combined score of 6-1.

2007-8: Just skips ahead and folds like a cheap tent immediately, losing first three games of their second round series against a team with almost a longer history of playoff gagging than San Jose’s.  Once the series is essentially decided, the Sharks actually show up for the next two, and combined with Dallas’ aforementioned predisposition to self-induced playoff vomiting actually extend the series all the way to 6 before losing.

2008-9: Loses first two games at home (and by the way, that’s now two years in a row they’ve lost the first two games of a second round series at home) and looks for all the world to be out in 5.

Is there some upward arc there I’m missing?

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/25/09 at 03:10 PM ET

PSH:The only way for San Jose to improve is to get more of those players.  It doesn’t matter if they happen to be “skill” players or “grit” players or offensive players or defensive players.

HiHD:Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.  Puck, the NHL is a capped league.  You cannot just stockpile infinite offensive talent until you reach a point of critical mass where sheer talent carries you past any opposition.  Even prior to the cap it was impossible to create a sufficient talent gap to just blow past everyone.

PSH:  Following your incorrect line of logic, it would be impossible for a team to win with the top offence in the league and the 20th best defence.  Yet these are exactly the numbers your Detroit Red Wings put up this season.  Your own tram proves your theory to be incorrect.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 04/26/09 at 01:50 AM ET

I think only the most shallow of hockey analysts could look at what the Wings did in the regular season this past year and say that it was an untrammeled look at how the team was constructed.

I mean, are you at all cognizant of how poorly defending championship teams tend to do in the year following their championship?  And, to be completely clear, it wasn’t nearly as much the team defense that accounted for the Wings GAA struggles this year as it was Osgood playing at an abyssmal level for 95% of his starts.  Detroit was #1 in the NHL in shots allowed last year.  This year… they were #2.

But, okay, set all of the relevant facts aside and just look at how the team is playing right now, in the playoffs, when it matters.  A) They have all kinds of players who will score traffic goals.  Even their elite players are willing to play in grenade range of the net.  B) They are getting playoff-quality goaltending.  C) They believe they will have A and B every night they play.  That’s why the Wings have won, that’s why any team that wins has won, and that’s largely why the Sharks lose.

Now, if you want to believe that Thornton, Marleau, Michalek and Cheechoo are guys who can score traffic goals, and f you want to believe that Nabokov is a guy the Sharks can count on to give them solid goaltending in the postseason… hey, knock yourself out.  It’s a free country.

I, on the other hand, will tend to believe what the past nearly half decade has told me about all of those guys and go the other direction.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/26/09 at 08:30 AM ET