Who Do Ya Like?

Very quick post before I head out for the weekend...

Schadenfreude being what it is, I typically turn fervently against any team that beats the Sharks in the playoffs. In the past, even teams that I normally like and support (such as Calgary and Edmonton) have earned my enmity in this manner. So you can imagine just how hard I was rooting for the Detroit Red Wings to beat the Dallas Stars in the Western Conference semifinals, and just how worried I got when the Stars came back, Sharks-style, from an 0-3 deficit to force a Game Six. (Seeing the Stars succeed where the Sharks had failed would've been too much to bear...)

But in the end the Wings took care of business, setting up what for the NHL has to be the dream final, pitting not only two hockey-mad cities but also two intriguingly disparate teams. The Red Wings, a threat to win it all each season for the past fifteen years, represent the old elite of the league. The Penguins, only two seasons removed from their fourth-consecutive last-place division finish, are making good on the promise of what everyone recognized a couple of years ago as a ridiculous amount of young talent, including Hart finalist Evgeni Malkin (21), Jordan Staal (19), and of course league poster boy Sidney Crosby (20).

It should be a great matchup, and I just have enough time for a quick prediction...

Wings in six.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

Honorary Hockey Player of the Night

I had the Astros-Phillies game on tonight in the background as I packed my bag for the weekend, and I was watching when Houston closer Jose Valverde took an RBI single by Pedro Feliz off the face. Valverde fell to the ground and immediately the Astros' training staff swarmed on to the field.

Not only did Valverde shake it off and stay in the game, but he even picked up the save.

Guy shoulda been a hockey player...

"Reech"-ing for the Top?

Give Carl Steward credit for his persuasive writing skills. After reading the piece he wrote yesterday for the Monterey County Herald, I totally want Mike Ricci to be the next head coach of the Sharks.

Steward gives good treatment to the various cons of this admittedly somewhat wacky notion--Ricci has never coached before, and his playing career is barely over--but I find many of the pros compelling. Do we really want to pluck a tired old retread--Paul Maurice, say, or Bob Hartley--off the NHL coaching carousel? If the Los Angeles Kings had waited until this moment to stupidly fire Andy Murray, he would've been worth snagging, but, alas, he's behind the bench in St. Louis. No one else in the ranks of the recently-dismissed gets me excited. The thought of Joel Quenneville coaching the Sharks next year is positively disheartening.

If Doug Wilson does get a Random Veteran NHL Coach to pilot his team, this would mean that firing Ron Wilson was merely a move to shake things up...nothing new is introduced to the system. Hell, you might as well hire Wilson back. To really change the game, the Sharks have to go a different direction. The team has plenty of talent, and I don't think further X-and-O-type line-juggling alchemy is what's needed, either. The team doesn't need someone to explain hockey to them...they need someone who will instill in them the remorseless killer instinct and I'll-skate-through-molten-lava-to-get-the-job-done attitude that it takes to be successful in the playoffs, and that they lacked so lamentably often this season.

Ricci could be the man for the job. He was a cornerstone of the team as it moved from mediocre to respectable to its current status of perennial contender. He has a face filled with hockey character, that has stopped a thousand pucks and fists and elbows. When Ricci's line was playing well it wore down opponents with a relentless forecheck. He's a tough guy in the very best sense of the term.

I hope Doug Wilson read Carl Steward's article...

Where Do We Go From Here?

It had been anticipated by many, and has now come to pass. Ron Wilson has been fired.

It's hard to argue with the notion that something had to change after yet another disappointing playoff exit. Part of the reason this malady is so distressing is that a diagnosis is so elusive...the Sharks seem like they ought to be a hockey team capable of bulldozing their way into the Stanley Cup Finals the way Pittsburgh and Detroit apparently are. All the pieces seem like they're there, but somehow things just never quite work when the playoffs come.

The Sharks' regular-season record was fantastic--second only to the Wings--but as I look back at my posts in this space over the course of the year I can see that I was continually beset by anxiety about the direction the team was heading. In this post, for instance, I worried about the team being fragile--a concern that appeared to be all-too-grounded when the Sharks collapsed in Game Two of the Dallas series after a bad break. My mid-season comments reflect concern about where the scoring was going to come from, despite the good record the team had posted to that point. Here I fretted about the Sharks' apparent lack of those intangibles that are so important come playoff time. And on and on. Indeed the team looked headed for a middle-of-the-pack finish before that twenty-game points streak swept them to the top of the Pacific and the two seed in the West.

But a twenty-game point streak is a twenty-game point streak...surely Coach Wilson deserves some credit for that, right? Well, maybe, maybe not. This is an immensely talented bunch of hockey players, and the thing that's so hard to gauge is whether their performance is at the level one ought to expect--or better, or worse. Looking at the above, and reflecting on my own analysis of the team as the season progressed, I have to say that I feel that this team ought to be better. Not just in the playoffs--that goes without saying, by now--but during the regular season as well. Somehow the team's talent just hasn't quite translated to results on the ice, and if the head coach of a professional sports team has a fundamental duty, it is to get the most out of the available talent.

In my mind, now that the Ron Wilson situation has been resolved (for better or worse), there are two major questions facing the organization in the offseason. First, of course, is who replaces Wilson? Second, will the firing of the head coach be the beginning or the end? Can we expect a major overhaul in player personnel, or is GM Doug Wilson hoping that this one surgical strike will win the war?

In any event, don't weep for Coach Wilson. With several coaching vacancies opening up around the league, he'll certainly find a home, and in fact will probably have multiple offers to choose from. We'll see him and his awesome suits behind an NHL bench next season.

Yes, Virginia, They Do Like Hockey In Dallas

According to the best available data, almost 100,000 TV viewers in the Dallas/Fort Worth market stayed up past 1 AM to watch the end of the Stars' 2-1 quadruple-overtime victory over the Sharks on Sunday.

It ain't the Super Bowl, but it ain't bad, either.

The game was one of the all-time classics, displaying the NHL product at its best, so this is really cool.

I Promised Some Analysis

Okay, I guess a few thoughts about the end of the Sharks' playoff hopes before they slip from mind...

1. Guts? Sure. Now let's worry about that space between the ears. Many questioned whether the Sharks had the guts and heart to make a deep playoff run. I think we can all agree after last night's courageous performance, and the valiant but ultimately futile attempt to dig out of the 0-3 hole, that guts and heart were present in abundance. The sheer desire to win that was absent in Game Six of the Calgary series (for instance) finally appeared consistently against Dallas.

But this team showed itself, once again, to be vulnerable to the type of psychological collapse that has plagued the Sharks in the past. In this series, it occurred in Game Two, when San Jose, leading by a goal in the opening seconds of the third period, caught a bad break (Joe Pavelski lost an edge and Brad Richards, in the right place at the right time, netted an easy one) and promptly panicked and fell apart. Dallas went on to win that game 5-2 and took a 2-0 series lead back to Texas. That was the turning point of the series, which established the Stars as the team firmly in control and the Sharks as the team desperately fighting their way back with no margin for error.

I am hereby convinced that this team--which ought to return largely intact next year--can play an entire playoff series with guts and heart and courage and effort. I have yet to be convinced they can play an entire playoff series without hitting the panic button.

2. No Shark emerged as a dominant playoff force. Patrick Marleau, Joe Pavelski, Joe Thornton, Ryan Clowe, Evgeni Nabokov...at times all of them played extremely well. But no player in teal ever really threatened to dominate a series and make a decisive difference the way R. J. Umberger has for Philadelphia, Johan Franzen has for Detroit, and Brenden Morrow has for Dallas. If future editions of this team are to be successful, someone is going to have to get that look in their eye that says "I will not be stopped and I will get the job done, even if I have to eat glass to do it." Who will that someone be?

3. My man-crush on Brian Campbell is over. Campbell's arrival keyed the Sharks to an astonishing stretch run, but his performance in the playoffs was mediocre at best. The power play he was supposed to run sputtered, and his puck-moving skills seemed to be of little help against Dallas' relentless forecheck. Before the playoffs, I was one of many screaming at Doug Wilson to sign Campbell at any cost. Now I'm not so sure... If we can keep him, let's keep him, but don't handicap the rest of the organization to do it.

The End

The Sharks lost tonight to Dallas in the fourth overtime, ending their season.

As much as I loathe the Stars, I have to extend congratulations to them. They played extremely well in this series. They will have to play even better to have a chance against a rested Red Wings team that is running like a well-oiled machine right now.

It's a bitterly disappointing end to a once-promising season. As much as I admire the way the Sharks battled back when down 3-0 in the series, it's extremely frustrating that they fell into such a hole in the first place.

The analysis can come later. With the end of the Sharks' season, I will likely be taking a step back from hockey for a bit. I'll probably watch some of the finals, but I won't schedule my life around it. I hope to continue to post at a reasonable clip--Sweet Hockey Card of the Week will return, and there are a few other topics I think I'd like to write about...some concerning the sport or the league in general, some about my own personal experiences as a fan.

But all that can come later, too. Right now I'm just tired and sad. I'll be better tomorrow...er, later on today.

If you've been a regular reader of this blog since it began in the beginning of January, I want to thank you for your time. I hope you've enjoyed it, I hope you can make it back occasionally during the offseason, and I hope you'll come back next year.

Okay. Time for bed. Team Teal forever!

Best wishes,
Chris

The Heavy Artillery Is In Reserve

This is my named-and-numbered San Jose Sharks sweater that I bought at the Sharks Store in Cupertino, California in 1994:



(Yes, it is a #6 sweater, but no, it does not say Ozolinsh on the back.)

I was wearing this when the Sharks beat the Wings in '94, and I wore it regularly for many years. Several years ago some kind friends of mine gave me a Sharks sweater in the updated style as a Christmas present. They were apologetic that is was blank, rather than having my name on it, but I told them this was actually a good thing...several visits to the X to see the Sharks play the Wild taught me that going into an enemy crowd wearing a sweater with your name on the back is leading with your chin.

As the years have gone on, and especially now that I have another teal sweater to wear, I have worn this old one less and less. It has become quite beloved to me--I own no other garment to which I feel anywhere near the level of sentimental attachment that I feel towards it. It's sturdy, but I do not wish to wear it out. I typically break it out for the first game of the season, then leave it in the closet for the rest of the year....barring Special Occasions.

If the Sharks can win tonight and somehow send this series back to the Tank, I'll be wearing it to work on Tuesday...

Getting In Their Heads

Now, the pressure is on the Dallas Stars.

Now it's a series.

Psychology has an enormously important role in ice hockey. This is attested to by old hockey aphorisms like "Never get scored on in the first or last minute of a period" (they all count the same, so why should it matter?), or, most notably, "A two-goal lead is the worst lead in hockey". (This is hokum, of course; a two-goal lead is obviously better than a one-goal lead. But the fact that this old chestnut, and the notion behind it--that a team leading by two goals is excessively relaxed, and therefore vulnerable to giving up a goal and conceding the momentum and beginning to worry, thus leading quickly to the game-tying goal--is so widely repeated amongst hockey people is evidence of a deeper truth).

Right now the Sharks are in the Dallas Stars' heads. Going into this series, Dallas was a lower-seeded team, coming off an impressive upset of the defending champions, playing against one of the favorites to win it all. Were they to lose...nyeh, no big whup. Beat the Ducks, good work, nice run. But now they are a team that has held a 3-0 series lead, and had been less than a period away from finishing off their opponent. Now they must either beat the Sharks tomorrow and sew up the series, or go back to San Jose for Game Seven as potentially the first team in thirty-three years to be on the verge of sweeping and wind up blowing it.

Ya think this is making them grip their sticks a little tighter?

We always talk about teams that make serious Cup runs having to face down adversity, and this is a moment of adversity for the Dallas Stars. They must show mental toughness and disregard the circumstances and muzzle any whispers of doubt they hear in their heads. After all, they have a chance to win the series on home ice, which is a great situation to be in as a lower-seeded team.

The Stars may very well pass this test. But the Sharks have turned a seemingly intractable problem into a solvable one. They're far from out of the chasm into which they fell, but at least they've defeated the Balrog.

(And by the way...from the way Stars fans are reacting to the disallowed goals in Game Five you'd think that an official decision about a controversial goal had never, ever gone their way before...)

Is There Any Reason For Optimism?

In another twenty-six hours or so I might be looking back on this post and laughing through my tears, but there seems to be just a bit of optimism amongst Shark watchers today. Is it justified? Is there any reason to believe that the Sharks could actually become the third team in Stanley Cup playoff history to win a series after falling into a three-games-to-none hole?

Call me crazy, but I think there might be. Yes, the odds against it are enormous--the Sharks must play shift after shift of just about literally perfect hockey, and probably get some help from Dallas to boot--but if there were ever a team that you might single out as being capable of pulling off such a Houdiniesque escape, it might be this year's San Jose Sharks. Here are some reasons why...

1. Dallas is not that much better than San Jose. In fact, the Sharks are probably the more talented team...the difficulties they have experienced this playoff season have had more to do with psychology than a lack of talent. As I alluded to in my last post, a good part of the reason the vast majority of teams that have gone up 3-0 have gone on to win is that they have generally been that much better than their hapless opponents...that's why they're up 3-0 in the first place.

In 1995, the Sharks upset the Calgary Flames in the first round of the playoffs and then got swept decisively by a vastly better Detroit Red Wings team. The final scores of the games were 6-0, 6-2, 6-2, and 6-2. Detroit probably would've swept that series if it had been best-of-seven or best-of-seventeen. This isn't that kind of series...the teams are both very good, and two of Dallas' three wins came in OT.

2. The Sharks are inconsistent...and that cuts both ways. Remember that franchise-record eleven-game winning streak earlier this season? Well, you may also remember that that run followed right on the heels of a season-high five-game losing streak that had certain fans of the team on the edge of despair. It's not inconceivable that last night's game--in which the Sharks played very well, flub by Setoguchi aside--could be the equivalent of the game against Philly that launched that winning streak.

3. The 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs were the first team to come back from a 3-0 series deficit and win. The 1975 New York Islanders were the second. You may notice that the second event occurred thirty-three years after the first. Well, guess what? 1975 was thirty-three years ago... (Oooooo...spooky!)

Okay, well I need to go now, because representatives of the Leland Stanford Junior University are (quite correctly) coming to take my engineering degree away after that last point. A Sharks rally is a very very long shot, but if any team could do it, it would be this erratic, occasionally brilliant, always maddening bunch.