Leaving the Door Open

The Sharks defeated the Los Angeles Kings tonight by a final score of 2-1. This extends San Jose's road winning streak to nine, and their string of games with at least a point to thirteen.

I almost envy other sports bloggers who have grounds to rail against their team's front office, but I honestly think it would be difficult for any Sharks fan to be critical of Doug Wilson...as a GM, he has way more wins than losses to his credit. (The Guerin trade last year didn't work out so well, but that was a rare misstep.) The Thornton deal alone would be the pinnacle of any GM's career, but his major moves this season are proving to be very savvy as well. Jody Shelley has been an excellent addition, of course the Campbell deal has all Sharks fans giddy (although the real measure of the success of that move will be whether or not Soupy can be persuaded to stay in teal), and Brian Boucher played his second excellent game tonight in spot relief of Evgeni Nabokov, finally conceding his first (and so far only) goal as a Shark after more than 115 minutes of shutout play.

The goal wasn't Boucher's fault--the sequence which led to it appeared to begin with a miscommunication amongst the San Jose defense, and things just got worse from there--but it still bothered me, because for what seems like the umpteenth time this year the Sharks showed an almost magical ability to turn a 2-0 lead into a 2-1 lead. Too often, those 2-1 leads have then morphed further into tie games. If they were a baseball team, you'd say they were in dire need of a closer.

But hockey isn't baseball, and what the Sharks really need is a greater ability to turn 2-0 leads into 3-0 leads...it's less about keeping the other guy off the board than it is about chasing that extra goal. I've already worried much in this space about the number of 6-on-5 goals the team has given up; despite the Sharks' gaudy record over the past month, a lot of those wins have come by razor-thin margins. On the one hand this is good...most games in the playoffs are tight, so it's good to know you can win those close ones. But on the other hand, letting opponents hang around is asking for trouble. Now that the team is firing on all cylinders, I'd really like to see them give themselves some lessons on slamming the door and putting the opposition away.