Should We Stop With The San Jose Sharks Jokes?

Have you ever been in a situation where the FIRST thing you think about someone is a joke? It might be 5 years old, it might not apply anymore and it might not even be that funny in the first place. But still, every time you hear the person’s name—one thing comes to mind. That seems to be the problem with the majority of NHL fans and the San Jose Sharks. I could rattle off statistic after statistic and talk about how good they look; yet still the vast majority of people will say something like, “they’re always like this in the regular season… but we know they’ll choke in the playoffs.” They’ve certainly earned the stigma of post-season choke artists over the last few seasons. But sometimes we need to step back and admit truths to ourselves without the jokes. The San Jose Sharks are REALLY fuckin’ good.

You may have been lulled to sleep with their pedestrian 3-3-1 start to the season. Maybe their surprising defeat to the Avalanche on Sakic’s retirement night made you think they slipped. Maybe the Kings jumping out to a 4-0 lead in the 3rd game of the season caused you to doubt. You could say they started the season like it was the first round of the playoffs.

"Do you like my jersey? This is last year's model."

The Ducks/Sharks 6-game series from last season may have been the most telling sign. Not only did the Ducks win; but I EXPECTED the #8 seed to beat the Sharks. And it had nothing to do with the Ducks and everything to do with San Jose’s past failures. Take a team that falters in the playoffs and hadn’t played a meaningful game in 2 months. Pit them against a desperate team that had to scratch and claw their way to get into the playoffs and has a history of thriving in the playoffs. Who would YOU expect to win?

But all of that was last year. Don’t look now—but the Sharks are sitting on top of the NHL standings. Again. “The more things change, they basically stay the same.”

After an offseason of doubt and criticism, how have the Sharks managed to bounce back so quickly? It seems like just yesterday that Joe Thornton was trying to prove to everyone that he was as tough as they wanted him to be. A Game 6 loss and an offseason to think about it could have been enough to destroy the team. There was speculation that GM Doug Wilson was going to blow the team up. They traded one of their most promising young players for a talented malcontent. On top of that, they took away the captaincy from Patrick Marleau who had been leading the team on and off the ice for 5 and a half years. The Sharks had a ton of question marks for a team that had 117 points last season.

There are plenty of things that go into a successful team, but 3 things stand taller than the rest for the Sharks. They have the talent, the depth and the right mix of youngsters and veterans to remain competitive for the foreseeable future. Those have been the secret to the Sharks success since the Dean Lombardi years and it doesn’t look like Doug Wilson has any intentions of changing the winning formula. If you ignore the playoff struggles, the Sharks have been consistently one of the most successful teams in all of hockey. Then again, that’s kind of like saying, “Other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?”

First and foremost, no team will win in the NHL if they don’t have talent. It can make coaches look great and opponents look painfully inept. From that point of view, the Sharks are near the top of the league. Their top line of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Dany Heatley features 3 guys that are in the top 7 in NHL scoring. If you give me that kind of top line, I could coach the team to 20 wins.

Sometimes, it looks like they’re playing a video game with the line-changes off.

Then they have two perennial all-stars on the blue line to eat up minutes from the backend and contribute to the team’s offensive firepower. Between the pipes they have a goaltender than I’ve questioned years—but may have to start respecting. In 500+ games, he’s about 100 games over .500 with a career save percentage of 2.38. I’m not about to start saying “Who’s your Nabby?” but he’s been one of the better goaltenders over the last decade.

They're good with him. They're good without him. And he's good enough to represent his country!

Top line talent alone would be enough to make the Sharks a good team. But what makes them a GREAT team is the depth of their talent. Earlier this season, Joe Pavelski missed 15 games with a broken foot. This is the same guy that was in the running to take over the “C” from Patrick Marleau in the offseason and is a very good bet to make the US Olympic team in Vancouver this February. We’re talking about a guy that is one of the best 2 way centers in the entire league. When he went down with an injury, the Sharks went 10-3-2. Their record WITH him in the lineup is 9-3-2. Doesn’t sound like they missed a beat, does it?

All you have to do is look at their line combinations to see how strong they are from top to bottom. As of Tuesday night’s game against the Senators, the Sharks had Devin Setoguchi and Torrey Mitchell on the 4th line. Are you kidding me? One of them is a 22 year old sniper who is already a 30-goal scorer in the league. The other is a penalty killing extraordinaire that is capable of doing THIS. That’s their 4th line? With that kind of depth, fans almost forget they have Kent Huskins on the blueline!

Don’t forget: they had enough depth to be able to trade Milan Michalak and Jonathan Cheechoo to add to that unbelievable top line. Those are guys that any team would miss—but it doesn’t look like the Sharks have missed them at all.

As if that kind of talent and depth weren’t enough, the Sharks look like they have the right mix between skilled youth and talented leadership. Young guys like Pavelski, Ryane Clowe and Marc-Edouard Vlasic are the type of players that teams could plan their future around (with Logan Couture trying to crack the everyday line-up). Stanley Cup winners Dan Boyle and Rob Blake serve to teach the young guys what it should take to make the next step in the team’s development. Then there are guys like Dany Heatley and Joe Thornton who look like they are in the middle of their prime.

So what do all of these factors mean? It means that despite all of the jokes of playoff failures, they’re still one of the elite teams in the NHL. Every single game they go into, they should win. Not could win, might win or have a chance to win: they SHOULD win. Aside from the defending Stanley Cup champs and that young team in Chicago, no one else in the league can say that.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop making fun of their playoff failures anytime soon. What’s the difference between Tiger Woods and the San Jose Sharks? The Sharks have to wait until the 2nd round of the playoffs before they can start golfing.

Yep, the jokes aren’t going anywhere until they win.

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