One More Game

Okay. At least we won't get swept.

The Sharks earned themselves one more game tonight with an energetic, desperate, and generally well-played 2-1 win in Dallas. The victory was really only marred by an egregiously bad turnover by Devin Setoguchi, who made the prettiest pass by a Shark of the night--right onto the tape of Dallas Star Jere Lehtinen, who was alone in the slot. Without the resulting goal, Evgeni Nabokov would've had himself a shutout. Patrick Marleau had a shorthanded goal to open the San Jose scoring (again), and Joe Thornton looked like himself (finally), controlling the puck well and earning the primary assist on the game-winner by Milan Michalek, who appears to have his game back.

Is it all too late? Probably. Although I dispute Mark Purdy's assertion that there is only a 1.3% chance of San Jose coming back and winning this series (the statistics are skewed because most of the teams in the history of the NHL that have fallen behind 3-0 have been overwhelmed by vastly superior talent, but that's not the case here--this isn't the 1995 Western Conference Semifinals), the fact remains that the Sharks are in an extraordinarily deep hole.

Still, what's a battle against the forces of evil without overwhelming odds? All the Sharks can do is worry about winning the next game. Trying to win three games at once tends to lead to boneheaded plays like passing the puck to opponents occupying your own slot.

Back to San Jose on Friday, where, unfortunately, the Dallas Stars are nigh unbeatable.

Chasm

Remember in the Lord of the Rings movies, when Gandalf gets knocked into that big huge crevice fighting that Balrog thing? Then he falls, like, all the way into the Middle of the Earth (Ha! Get it?) and has to fight the Balrog?

The hole the Sharks are in after losing tonight to Dallas is a jillion times deeper than that.

Just Dreadful

At a time in this second-round playoff series with Dallas that the Sharks needed one of their best periods of hockey, they instead delivered one of their worst, and wasted no time doing so. Trailing 2-1 after two, the Stars had the game tied within thirty seconds and went on to win 5-2. San Jose is now in an extremely deep 2-0 hole in the best-of-seven series, which now heads to Texas.

What an awful, dreadful performance.

I wouldn't be as concerned about the 2-0 series deficit as I am--the Sharks have played well in Dallas this year, after all--except for the fact that right now the team does not look capable of playing good enough hockey to dig their way out. Dallas is making the game look easy, and San Jose is making the game look hard.

I want to believe the Sharks are a Stanley-Cup caliber team, but based on performances to date I cannot. Yes, I know they played a whale of a game to close out the series with Calgary, but let's not forget that game was necessary because of a blown three-goal lead in one game and what looked like a collective decision to just sort of casually pass on a chance to eliminate the Flames in Game Six, like a guest at a potluck passing over the three-bean salad.

Man do I hate losing to Dallas.

The Empire Strikes First

Okay, so the Evil Empire just blew up Alderaan.

With Marty Turco playing this well, the Dallas Stars are going to be very tough to beat, and already the Sharks are in a 1-0 hole after losing tonight 3-2 in overtime. San Jose played reasonably well tonight, and that effort I've been looking for was there, but some aspects of their game are going to have to improve if they're going to come back and win this series.

First of all, the penalty killing remains a major problem. Dallas' first goal came on the power play, and would've been scored even if minor penalties were only fifteen seconds in length (Devin Setoguchi went into the box at 5:53 of the second period, and the Stars promptly won the faceoff and scored thirteen seconds later). This type of thing happened multiple times against Calgary, too. The penalty kill at the end of regulation, with Brian Campbell in the box, also looked very shaky, but the Sharks were aided by a questionable hand-pass call against Dallas and managed to take the game to overtime. Note to the Sharks' coaching staff: Please fix the penalty kill. Thanks. Yours truly, Team Teal in the Twin Towns.

Also, I think Evgeni Nabokov has to play better. He's playing okay--although he looked awfully frantic on the sequence that led to the game-winning goal, and was consequently out of position for Brenden Morrow's shot--but if Turco continues to play great, the Sharks can't win this series with Nabby only playing well. He has to find some brilliance and make some stops that he has no business making. It's a disproportionate burden to put on a single player, but that's the nature of playoff goaltending.

Positives from tonight? Milan Michalek got a lucky break, getting credited with a goal when a shot he launched after (once again) nearly stickhandling himself into oblivion managed to trickle into the Dallas net. Maybe that'll break the ice and get him going. Also, the Sharks deserve credit for fighting their way back to the 2-2 tie that sent the game to overtime; traditionally, the Stars are unsurpassed in their ability to put a stranglehold on an offense and protect a lead, so it ought to be good for San Jose's morale that they were able to come back and get a late goal.

Game Two Sunday.

Three Nouns

A noun, as we all know, is a person, place or thing. Let's look at three nouns--one of each type--that will be crucial to the Sharks in their upcoming playoffs series with the Evil Empire.

Every person you can know...

PERSON: Milan Michalek

Ask anyone who watched San Jose's first-round clash with Calgary to recall something that Milan Michalek did in that series, and you will certainly hear about how he failed to get a shot away while leading a three-on-one break in Game Six. Ask them to recall something else Michalek did, and they will likely shrug and give up.

Michalek was San Jose's second leading scorer this year (24 goals and 31 assists for 55 points) and a rare source of reliable offense not named Joe Thornton. But his production waned down the stretch and vanished--literally--in the series against the Flames. That's right, Michalek had nary a point in any of the seven games. By Game Six and that trainwreck of a three-on-one that represented the nadir of an awful night, it was clear that Milan had completely lost his confidence.

He needs to get it back...to look at the upcoming series against Dallas as a chance to reboot the 2008 playoffs and start over. The Stars are always a tough defensive team, and Marty Turco is playing great hockey right now. The Sharks can't afford to have a player of Michalek's goal-scoring ability serve up another goose egg.

...and every place that you can go...

PLACE: The Penalty Box

The San Jose penalty kill, a source of strength for most of the year, began to wobble as the season drew to a close, looking at times very vulnerable down the stretch, even while the Sharks were putting together long strings of wins. But it was downright dreadful against Calgary, often at the worst possible times...indeed, it was the collapse of the penalty kill that really doomed San Jose in that Game Three (of the blown 3-0 lead).

On the other hand, the Dallas power play was flying high against Anaheim, racking up ten power-play goals in only six games. Add to this the possibility that lethal point man Sergei Zubov could be returning to the Stars' lineup soon, and you have the classic case of unstoppable force versus extremely movable, smashable, crushable object.

The Stars will try to goad the Sharks into taking penalties, but the Sharks gotta stay out of the box. Either that or they gotta figure out how to make clearing the puck while shorthanded something other than a task of epic difficulty. Or both...both would be nice.

...and any thing that you can show...

THING: Effort

I've said it before, and recently, but it can't be said too many times: the Sharks have to put forth playoff-level effort every night. They didn't do that against Calgary. It's got to be there every game against Dallas, or the offseason starts early.

How I See the Dallas Stars

I grew up in Northern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior, but my family has Twin Cities roots, especially on my mom's side. As a consequence I largely grew up a fan of Minnesota sports teams...the Twins, the various Golden Gopher teams, occasionally the Vikings (although some time around Super Bowl XIV I discarded this allegiance in favor of the Los Angeles Rams--my concern with scrimmage football has always been somewhat fleeting and unsteady), and, of course the Minnesota North Stars.

The North Stars were my team. I used to get down to the old Met in Bloomington occasionally and watch them play, often with my mom's brothers. I have vivid memories of the extraordinary upset of the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round of the 1991 playoffs--I was house/dog-sitting for my uncle at the time, and listened to the action on the radio. That victory initiated a playoff run that took the North Stars all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they at last lost to a Pittsburgh Penguins team that included Mario Lemieux (even though Lemieux scored this goal against my guys in that final, I distinctly remember admiring it at the time) and a certain guy who is currently on the New York Rangers' roster.

Those familiar with the history of the NHL no doubt know where this is going. In 1993, the North Stars moved to Dallas, dropped the "North", and became the team the Sharks are about to play in the Western Conference Semis. It was like having a body part violently amputated. I was angry. I felt betrayed, particularly after that Cup run and all the emotion I had invested in it. Fans in Winnipeg, Quebec City, and Hartford know what I'm talking about.

Occasionally, as I grow older, a little voice pops up in my head and says "Dude...chill. You have the Sharks, Minnesota has a team again, and, face it, hockey has been a hit in Dallas. The entire experience made you the fan you are today. Where's the foul?" The voice makes some good points, but whenever I hear it I shoo it away like an irritating insect. Instead of heeding it I nurse the deep, bitter grudge I feel towards the Stars. I gloat with every victory over Dallas and feel stricken with every defeat at their hands. I thank the hockey gods that they are in the same division as the Sharks, because I relish every opportunity to play them during the regular season. Getting them in the playoffs is even better.

(Although I gotta admit that Bad Sharks Penalty Killing + Sergei Zubov Returning From Injury = SCAR-EEEEYY! Gulp...)

Escape

Where to begin?

The San Jose Sharks bounced back from their dismal Game Six performance in Alberta and defeated the Calgary Flames 5-3 tonight, winning their first-round playoff series four games to three.

That's the one-line summary, but it doesn't begin to scratch the real story.

Let's start with Jeremy Roenick. JR, who is older than his uniform number (ahem) and was a healthy scratch in Game Six, was involved in four of San Jose's five goals, scoring two himself and chipping in two assists. You hear a lot of talk in the playoffs about the importance of "veteran presence", et cetera, and it's the kind of thing that one is tempted to sneer at and dismiss. Sharks GM Doug Wilson lured JR out of retirement in the offseason precisely to bring to the team that kind of guy...the kind of guy who can lead a team to victory through sheer force of will. So clearly he believes in it. I believe in it, too, and I offer Roenick's performance tonight as evidence.

I find something hockey-affirming in this. The notion that willpower, emotion, and courage can be at least as important as talent in ice hockey is not just an old saw for writers of dramatic sports journalism...it's as real as the blood on Patrick Marleau's face in Game Three.

I think the effort of Joe Thornton has to be acknowledged tonight, as well. Big Joe has taken a lot of heat for allegedly disappearing in the playoffs, not just this season but in years past (and not just in San Jose...in Boston, too). To an extent, I think some of this criticism is justified. But it's not about the goals. Some of Thornton's critics have been grumbling that his playoff goal totals are meager, but Thornton is not primarily a goal scorer and never has been. He is a dominant possessor of the puck and an extraordinary passer, and as such his role is to make the other players on the ice better. He excels in this role, which is why he's always among the league leaders in assists. But in this series, Thornton has only rarely seemed to be the player he was during the regular season--the dominant final shift in Game Four that ended in his game-winning goal was an exception, not the rule. But Thornton played inspired hockey tonight, possessing the puck well and winning at least two crucial battles for loose pucks in the late-going with six Flames on the ice.

The Sharks put forth the kind of dominating effort tonight that many fans of the team knew was possible, but which, to our frustration, we glimpsed only rarely during the regular season. It goes without saying that I'm glad the Sharks put together this strong of a game tonight, but in my mind it's still an open question whether the Sharks really have what it takes to play playoff-caliber hockey with enough consistency to challenge for the Stanley Cup.

The Sharks can be proud of their effort tonight, but they also need to count themselves as extremely fortunate to have advanced to the second round after a series that included a blown 3-0 Game Three lead and a dreadful effort in Game Six. They were the best of teams, they were the worst of teams. If they "come out flat" in even one game against Dallas, that will be one game too many, and summer vacation will be on us before we know it.

What will it take to convince me? A playoff series in which the Sharks work hard, fight for every loose puck, hit, get to the tough areas of the ice, and show the remorseless killer instict of, well, sharks, in every game. Not just "When it counts", or "When it matters most". Every. Single. Game.

Next are the Dallas Stars, the Evil Empire, against whom I nurse a deep and very personal grudge. I can't think of a team I'd rather beat in the playoffs.

Outworked

Give me a choice between a team that doesn't work hard and a team that plays like the Keystone Kops and I'll take the Kops any day...at least you can look back on your team's losses and feel confident they gave it their best. However, you would at least hope that you could have a choice between one or the other. In tonight's 2-0 loss to the Calgary Flames, the San Jose Sharks were both Kops-ish and outworked.

The Sharks performed badly in every fundamental of the game tonight, with the exception of goaltending (Nabokov had a good, but not spectacular, game) and possibly penalty killing (at least it was an improvement over the previous games in this series). From making passes to clearing the defensive zone to holding the offensive zone to winning faceoffs, and yes, even to skating, Los Tiburones looked somewhere between mediocre and inept.

(The Sharks had a clean three-on-one break tonight that ended without a shot on goal. That pretty much captures the way the night went as far as hockey proficiency goes.)

Worse, however, is that the effort put forth by the Sharks was not remotely equal to that put forth by the Flames. The frustrations of mid-season are repeating themselves, just with a compressed time scale and vastly greater consequences. On February 17th, after a lackluster 3-1 loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, I wrote...

"You guys are simply too good to let a promising season slide into mediocrity because everyone else in the league wanted it more. I know you don't want that, and I know I don't want to watch that."

I feel like I could say the exact same thing right now, possibly replacing "everyone else in the league" with "Calgary Flames". I lack the vocabulary to adequately describe how baffling and frustrating it is that the Sharks came out with such a tepid effort tonight.

We'll see what happens in Game Seven back at San Jose Arena, but even if the Sharks do manage to come up with a win and get to the next round, they are not going to advance much further unless they learn that all twenty guys need to show up and work hard wire-to-wire every single night.

Mid-April is, of course, far too late in the season to be absorbing this particular lesson. If the Sharks are going to advance and make good on the potential of this promising season, it's going to have to be in spite of the fact that they're only cracking Chapter One of the textbook after the professor has distributed the final exam.

Roller Coaster

There is no roller coaster ride quite like the NHL playoffs.

Minnesota and Colorado went to overtime in the first three games of their series, with Minnesota taking two before suffering a 5-1 pasting last night that knotted up the series. The Nashville Predators, four minutes away from a 3-0 series deficit on Monday against the Wings, roared back with three late goals to win the game and serve notice that they ain't dead yet. And of course the San Jose Sharks, following an epic, sickening collapse on Sunday, came from behind to stun the Calgary Flames last night, with Joe Thornton getting the game-winner with 9.4 seconds left on the clock.

A day and a half ago the gloom hanging over Sharks watchers was so thick and black that not only had many written off this series, and therefore the season, but some even questioned the very future of the franchise. When the Flames went nasty on the Sharks on Sunday after falling behind 3-0 in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the Sharks melted away into a pool of tepid, teal-tinted water. Calgary rallied to win 4-3, an outcome that honestly never seemed in doubt after the Flames got their first goal. That's what was so sickening about it--the sense that you could smell the disaster coming.

The reason the loss was so disheartening is that the failure to respond to the tough, dirty, physical challenges of the playoffs had been identified by the front office as the key weakness of the team in the offseason (and the offseason before, too, as long as we're lingering around the subject). This year, we were assured, would be different. And yet there it was, playing out right in front of us, just like the Edmonton series two years ago. I felt like Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back when the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon fails yet again--"They told me they fixed it!" I screamed. "I trusted them to fix it!" (This was followed by a wail reminiscent of the voice of the galaxy's most mournful Wookie).

The screams of joy that probably woke up my peacefully sleeping neighbors last night 'round 11:30 PM Central Time were therefore inspired not just by victory in a key playoff game ("key playoff game" is a tautology, I suppose) but also by sheer relief that finally my guys had shown some guts and heart at a crucial time. As I've said before, possession of these qualities is no guarantee of success, but without them ye will surely lose.

So: back to the Tank tomorrow. The Sharks certainly have the momentum right now, but last night's game could justifiably go down in history as a textbook example of just how quickly Big Mo can switch sweaters in the sport of ice hockey. When--it's not a question of if--the Flames sock the Sharks in the gut tomorrow night in an effort to get them to fold once again, how will Team Teal respond? Will this be the turning point in the history of the franchise, when the team finally starts living up to the potential of its talent? Is it truly darkest before the dawn? We'll find out in the coming days, as this particular storyline unfolds amongst a host of others in the NHL playoffs, an event that is unmatched for drama in the world of sports.

And this is only the first round.

Never. Give. Up.

The Sharks trailed the Flames 2-1 with less than five minutes left and were staring at a 3-1 series deficit in the wake of Sunday's crushing loss.

Then Jonathan Cheechoo scored to tie it at 15:06 of the third period. Then Thornton scored the game winner with 9.4 seconds left on a deflection of a Douglas Murray point shot.

Now the series is tied 2-2 and it's the guys in red who will be nursing the wounds of a blown lead heading into the next game.

This team still has tons to prove, but at long last they finally showed some guts and played with desperation when nothing else would do.

Shattering

All season long we've wondered if this San Jose Sharks team would be able to overcome adversity come playoff time.

Adversity has arrived in the form of a crushing 4-3 defeat at the hands of the Calgary Flames, in a game the Sharks led 3-0 only a few minutes in.

If this team is going to respond, they need to respond Right Now. Otherwise they are going to be ushered out of the playoffs in the first round by a Flames team that feels like Supermen right now.

The only upside is that I've been working on taking this stuff less seriously, and this is about as savage a test as I can imagine being put through.

I'm going to bed.

Heeeeere we Go!

So the Sharks and the Flames get each other in the first round.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it really doesn't matter who you play...any team that gets into the Stanley Cup playoffs these days is going to be tough.

Should be a great series...gotta love the atmosphere against a Canadian team.

Quick post tonight...I'm going to be out of town (in California, as it happens) for the next few days, so even though the Sharks will play tomorrow night and then again on Thursday, I probably won't be able to post. Hopefully, I'll be able to watch the games, though.

Till next time, then...

The Old Man and the "C"s

The Washington Capitals defeated a stubborn but worn-out Florida Panthers team tonight 3-1 to secure the Southeast Division championship and the accompanying playoff spot, but not before the sellout crowd at Verizon Center was obliged to endure some anxious moments. After a first-period goal by Tomas Fleischmann gave the home team a 1-0 lead, the Capitals failed to score on a pair of minute-long 5-on-3 advantages, and when Kamil Kreps tied the game for Florida you could almost see the mist of anxiety fall across the previously raucous Washington fans.

Then, with about five minutes left in the second, Alexander Semin found thirty-eight-year-old Sergei Fedorov--who was on the ice for the Detroit Red Wings at the end of the Sharks' famous 1994 playoff upset--in open ice with a Thorntonesque pass. Fedorov wound up and blasted an absolute bullet past Panthers goalie Craig Anderson and the Caps were ahead to stay.

Fedorov, acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets in a trade-deadline deal this February, will likely never approach even twenty goals in a season again, let alone the 56 he scored in 1993-94. But he still has an enormous amount to contribute. He has always been an excellent defensive player, his hockey IQ is probably unsurpassed amongst active players, and as he showed tonight he still has that intangible something that inspires the greatest athletes to play their best at the most critical times. And now he Semin and Alexander Ovechkin and Cristobal Huet and Mike Green and head coach Bruce Boudreau and all the rest of this motley bunch are headed for the playoffs. It's a feel-good, Cinderella story of a type the NHL has not seen for a long time.


A little love for the Panthers, please...

I think some kudos need to go out the Florida Panthers for a couple of gutsy performances over the last couple of nights. Without any postseason of their own to look forward to, the Panthers, in a position to play a major role in the final Eastern Conference playoff picture, provided difficult opposition for both the Canes and the Caps. Especially after an exhausting, skin-of-their-teeth win over Carolina last night, the Panthers had every excuse to collapse in the face of all of the energy and emotion that had built behind the Capitals. But they played hard...even after Alexander Semin scored early in the third to put Washington up 3-1, Florida never gave up. Laurels in particular to goalie Craig Anderson, who played courageously and well, facing 66 shots over five periods of work. It was an honorable performance the Panthers can be proud of.


Yes, I know this isn't supposed to be a Capitals blog!

But it's an exciting story! And an important one for the league! But, yes, Team Teal in the Twin Towns will now return to being a blog dedicated to the most awesomest team ever, the San Jose Sharks.

Go, Los Tiburones!

Saturday Scraps (April 5th, 2008)

Humility, thy name is Losing to the Kings

The Sharks' 20-game point streak ended on Thursday with a 4-2 defeat in Los Angeles.

There's no good time to lose, but of course this streak had to come to an end at some point. Detroit defeated Columbus earlier that evening, sewing up the President's Trophy and ensuring that the Sharks-Kings matchup would be genuinely meaningless in terms of position in the standings, and one wonders if this didn't have an effect on the Sharks. Evgeni Nabokov got the start in goal in a last-minute reversal by head coach Ron Wilson (we had been told for days that Brian Boucher would play against LA), but Christian Ehrhoff, Craig Rivet, Jonathan Cheechoo, Devin Setoguchi, and Marcel Goc all sat...chances are all of these players are dealing with minor injuries and could use a bit of extra rest before the playoffs start.

So by losing to the last-place Kings, San Jose didn't really suffer any damage of consequence, except possibly a blow to their ego. With the right attitude, the team can turn this into a positive. "Tonight kind of showed that if you let your guard down, even for a little bit, the game's not going to go your way," Mike Grier was quoted as saying in the AP recap. A timeless and valuable lesson that a team cannot be reminded of too many times.

Tomorrow the Sharks wrap up the regular season in Dallas. The loss to LA ought to give San Jose motivation to beat the Stars and go into the postseason on a good note. I hope they come out charging, because I loooooove beating Dallas.


A Long, Strange Trip

So after weeks of hanging on to the tail-end of the playoff caboose by the very tips of their fingernails, the Washington Capitals at last control their own destiny. The Carolina Hurricanes lost to the Florida Panthers last night by the final score of 4-3 in their last game of the season, ensuring at a stroke that Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Boston made the playoffs and putting the improbable Caps in a position to win the Southeast Division championship if they can get at least a point out of their game against Florida tonight. Only one team from the Southeast will make the playoffs, so for both Washington and Carolina it's either win the division and get the East's third seed or start scheduling tee times.

The Hurricanes feel, quite correctly, that the entire hockey world is against them. I freely admit that I am cheering with all my might for the Caps, and there is no doubt that the Powers That Be at NHL headquarters in New York are desperately hoping that Alexander Ovechkin and his 60+ goals will head to the playoffs. The only obstacle in their path is a Florida Panthers team that survived a grueling game against Carolina yesterday and has nothing to play for other than pride and the chance to be a spoiler.

However, having watched the Canes-Panthers game yesterday I can testify to the fact that pride and the chance to be a spoiler are serving as tremendous motivators for Florida. They are clearly in no mood to be a pushover--they were outshot 46-17, played most of the game with backup goalie Craig Anderson in net after Tomas Vokoun left with back spasms, were clearly exhausted by the middle of the third period, and faced power play after power play, but still hung on for the win, displaying admirable guts and heart in the process. Do they have one more such game in them? We'll find out tonight...I'll be tuning in, even though it means abandoning my Final Four-watching friends to do so. (Hey, priorities are priorities!)

Go Caps!

Can it be a Tie?

For a while, this post was going to be entitled, "Why Joe Thornton Should Win the Hart".

For a more or less equal amount of time, this post was going to be entitled, "I Feel Like a Traitor For Writing This, But..."

The race for the Hart Memorial Trophy, awarded each year to the NHL's MVP, is wide-open this season. Candidates have to include Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin, Calgary's Jarome Iginla, and even Evgeni Nabokov. But once the votes are counted, it should come down to a two-man race between Washington's Alexander Ovechkin and San Jose's own Joe Thornton.

The case for Big Joe is extremely strong, and of course I have a deeply ingrained teal bias. For the first half of the season (at least) watching the Sharks was an exercise in frustration. (This post from January pretty much captures my feeling at the time). They were an immensely talented but inconsistent bunch unable to get any production from the two guys who were supposed to be their leading goal scorers (Jonathan Cheechoo and Patrick Marleau). Yet somehow the team won games. A big part of this was a generally high level of defensive play, led by Nabokov in goal, and this is why Nabby deserves Hart consideration himself. But most of all, Thornton seemed to bring his best every night, and his best is very very good. There were times when he almost literally carried the San Jose offense on his own and led the Sharks to victory.

The Sharks weathered the rough times at the start of the season, somehow managing to stay within shouting distance of the top of the Western Conference despite the struggles of Cheechoo and Marleau and a seeming inability to win at home. Then, starting that night in Philadelphia, things started to go right. A few days later Brian Campbell joined the team and the puzzle seemed to be complete. No team has been able to beat the Sharks in regulation since, and as of this writing (the Blackhawks lead the Wings 5-2, early in the third) the President's Trophy is still a possibility.

The outstanding performances of Nabokov and Thornton provided the shelter that allowed this year's edition of the San Jose Sharks to struggle, err, learn, and grow, finding their game and their heart and their intensity in time to turn what looked like a potentially deeply disappointing team into the best Sharks squad ever. Nabby should get the Vezina (if he doesn't it's a dreadful injustice) so it seems only right to recognize Thornton's contribution to this extraordinary season with the Hart.


Except there's this guy in Washington...

As much as I love Joe, I cannot deny that the Capitals' Alexander Ovechkin also has a very strong claim to the Hart. First, just look at the numbers...63 goals, 110 points as of this writing. Ovechkin is the first player to top 60 goals since Mario Lemieux in the 1995-96 season. For a league that has struggled--and sometimes failed--in recent years to find even a single fifty-goal scorer, this is of immense importance. Never mind his value to the Capitals, which is of course enormous--he has led a back-from-the-dead charge which may or may not take the Caps to the playoffs, but which nevertheless has enchanted the hockey world and even captured the attention of casual fans. Ovechkin, taking obvious delight in everything that has to do with hockey, is of tremendous value to the league.

I reject the notion that Ovechkin should not be considered for the Hart unless the Caps make the playoffs. If we're going to set some sort of standard of team performance for Hart consideration, it ought to be hoisting the Cup, because nothing else matters. A team that makes the playoffs but loses in the first round is not more successful than a team that barely misses the playoffs in any meaningful way...if you're looking for yardsticks to measure the development of a franchise, enormous improvement of the type the Capitals have shown over the course of this season ought to count. If Washington had continued to be an easily beatable team despite Ovechkin's best efforts, that would be one thing. But win or lose the team has been the central actor in a captivating playoff race, and they are scary hot. (Should the Capitals squeak in to the last playoff position, the top seed in the East suddenly doesn't look like such a good deal).

I suppose only one guy can win it, and I have to admit I'm rooting for Joe--there's probably some bias at work here, but hey, that's sports. I'm a fan, dangit. Hopefully, though, Ovechkin will get the consideration he deserves, regardless of the success or failure of the Capitals' current mad sprint for the finish line.