Since 2004 the Sharks have entered the playoffs as one of the top five teams in the NHL. Every spring fans’ hopes are raised as they dream that the Sharks captain du jour (Patrick Marleau? Rob Blake? Joe Thornton?) will hoist the Stanley Cup for the traditional lap around the ice come mid June.
And in every year since 2004 Sharks fans have been forced to deal with crushing disappointment. From hot opposing goaltenders to jarring last second goals to poor defense to questionable leadership to just plain bad luck, the Sharks have won more playoff games since 2004 than any team other than the Detroit Red Wings yet have naked ring fingers on their own hands and broken hearts in the chests of their devoted fans.
The team has dismissed anyone who didn’t seem fully committed to winning the big prize. During the 2008 playoffs, for example, then-Head Coach Ron Wilson said the most important thing in his life was seeing the smile on his granddaughter’s face, and that her birth earlier that season helped put hockey in perspective. He was fired almost immediately after the Sharks were eliminated.
Some fans have blogged that this year was the biggest disappointment yet. They hypothesized that after years of near misses that everything was lined up for the Sharks to win. The team was terrific during the last three months of the regular season. San Jose had a good first round draw against the Los Angeles Kings and dispatched them in six games. In the second round they won the first three games against the arch nemesis Detroit Red Wings, and that is when many experts and fans say the wheels came off the track.
Predictably, the Sharks lost game four in Detroit. One might slay a giant, but rarely will he be embarrassed by getting swept with game four at home. Game five at HP Pavilion is the one a lot of the Sharks and their fans would like to have back. San Jose thoroughly outplayed Detroit for the first two periods, and Joe Pavelski’s goal early in the third period gave the Sharks a 3-1 lead. In the NHL, teams convert third period leads into wins about 90 per cent of the time, and good teams with two goal leads at home are more successful than that.
Not this time. The Sharks coughed up three goals in less than ten minutes and lost game five. They had a third period lead in game six and lost that one in Detroit before finally hanging on to eliminate the Red Wings in game seven at San Jose.
For those not keeping track, that blown lead in game five meant six extra periods of hockey at its most taxing, plus two more cross country trips between San Jose and Detroit. It also meant that the Sharks had just two days to rest and prepare before opening the conference finals in Vancouver against the team with the league’s best regular season record.
In game one against the Canucks, San Jose again had the lead in the third period before surrendering two late goals. Head Coach Todd McLellan blamed that loss on fatigue. In game two, a 7-3 loss, McLellan said the team lost its poise, which is unforgivable at this level when the stakes are so high. After winning game three, the normally potent Sharks did not take advantage of five power play opportunities in the first 23 minutes of game four before committing a rash of penalties of their own that led to three Vancouver power play goals in about three minutes and lost 4-2 despite outshooting the Canucks 35-13.
Now down 3-1 in games, the Sharks faced an uphill climb that only about one of every twelve teams can successfully navigate. They played hard and well in game five, outshooting Vancouver 56-34 before a bad call and a bad bounce cost them two goals and a 3-2 defeat in double overtime. That’s hockey, but San Jose’s earlier transgressions had removed their margin for error, so once again they were on the sidelines when the Stanley Cup Finals were played last month.
Now what? The core of the team is aging but not old, and is under contract for three more seasons. The head coach is young and bright and is universally considered an asset. Head of hockey operations Doug Wilson, the man who puts the pieces together, recently received a contract extension. The sum of all that means that nothing important is likely to change soon.
It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result. So are the Sharks and their fans crazy to think that this current group might eventually bring the Stanley Cup to Northern California?
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