Baseball season will end this month. Football is mainly limited to weekends. Local college basketball teams play only about twice a week. With the NBA lockout you, the dedicated sports fan and Off the Bench reader, will have plenty of spare time to fill this winter.
Why not follow the team that has won more NHL regular season and playoff games than any other team over the past five seasons? That team, the San Jose Sharks, is located down the road and has reloaded this offseason to take another run at its holy grail, The Stanley Cup.
While the players the Sharks have added; Brent Burns, Martin Havlat, Michal Handzus, James Sheppard, Jim Vandermeer, and Colin White are not household names outside of Canada and parts of Europe, suffice to say that among them are a couple of top tier defensemen, penalty killers, and reliable scorers that Sharks General Manager Doug Wilson believes could help the team attain its elusive championship.
“We have high expectations, but we have not yet achieved our goal,” said Wilson of the Stanley Cup title. “We are always seeking ways to get better. We think we have a three-year window with our best players…we try to live each year in the moment and add the pieces we need. Our primary focus is on today.”
Fans tend to have a win-now mentality, which is a good match for Wilson’s approach. So those who follow the Sharks can be assured that management is doing everything it can to win, meaning following the Sharks can be a very satisfying experience.
What has been less satisfying is the annual disappointment in the playoffs. Despite the team’s regular season success it has never played in the Stanley Cup Finals. Not surprisingly, Wilson is proud of what the team has accomplished and is optimistic for the coming season.
“We have been in the final four the last two seasons (though they went 1-8 in those two semi-final series) and in the process we beat one of the most dominant hockey teams, the Detroit Red Wings, twice.
“Last year we got off to a slow start and were 12th in the conference in mid January. We had to finish strong to make the playoffs (the Sharks went 24-4-4 down the stretch and earned the second seed in the Western Conference). That gave us very little margin for error. The rush we put on at the end of the season led to injuries. We will not accept a slow start this season.”
Wilson said that the greatest area of focus this coming season will be improving the penalty kill. The Sharks had been a top five team in that area for most of the past five seasons before dropping to 24th last season. “Handzus, White and Vandemeer are great penalty killers, which is part of why we acquired them. Penalty killing is execution of everyone on the ice. We are driven to get back into the top five.”
To improve in that area, and to acquire top defenseman Burns, the Sharks gave up two big scorers and popular players, Devon Setoguchi and Dany Heatley to the Minnesota Wild in separate deals. “We wish Heatley and Seto all the best,” said Wilson. “We think players like Joe Pavelski and Logan Coture are ready for an expanded role. We don’t think our scoring will fall off.”
The NHL has a hard salary cap, but unlike most good teams the Sharks have never had to dismantle their roster in a salary cap panic. “It starts with our ownership group and the discipline we need to make our players want to play here. We have a full building every night, we are committed to winning, and we try to treat our players fairly. That allows us to structure our contracts the way we do. Players want to win and they want to be in a winning environment.”
Essentially, the Sharks are able to offer players less money in exchange for a winning environment while selling them on the notion that if everyone sacrifices a little the team will keep its best players together and succeed. The franchise cornerstone players, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Dan Boyle, have bought into this and the supporting cast has universally followed.
Those who follow the Sharks this winter will get to watch a skilled, championship-starved team play an exciting brand of hockey in front of a passionate fan base. The Warriors haven’t offered that combination in more than 30 years, and this winter they probably won’t even play.
There’s room on the bandwagon for anyone who wants to climb aboard. Who knows, you may even get to bask in that championship glow come June.
Leave a Reply