Hunting the whale

http://www.acapitalwasteland.com/2013/02/2013-nhl-jersey-rankings.html

The Vancouver Canucks have unforgettable uniforms: A splashy blue, green and white color scheme with an aesthetically pleasing font of VANCOUVER across the top with a C-outlined majestic Orca (Killer Whale) leaping towards its prey.  It's the only pleasing part of the Vancouver Canucks. Everything else screams arrogance, dirty play, diving, obnoxious fans etc. I believe the Canucks and their mouthy coach, Alain Vigneault, take pride in being in the team everyone else in the NHL loves to hate, despite recent claims of Vancouver abhorring the villain title. I think the Sedin twins, the Alex twins (Burrows and Edler), Kevin Bieksa, Mason Raymond, Bobby Lu (are you gonna get traded or not?) and Alain privately wanting to be Bond bad guys (can you imagine Henrik and Daniel as Swedish twin assassins chasing Daniel Craig around Stockholm, or maybe even Craig as Mikael Blomkvist, the identical twins wielding hockey stick-shaped swords?). 

So it's pretty clear beating Vancouver -2011 Western Conference finals be damned- will carry a little extra pep in your step if you're the San Jose Sharks tonight when they play the Canucks in British Columbia.  The Sharks arguably need this win a little more if you consider Vancouver holds a two-point lead in a mostly pedestrian Northwest Division. Conversely, the Sharks are already nine points behind Anaheim in a Pacific Division that also features the defending Stanley Cup-champions, four of five teams currently in playoff position and another in ninth place but currently tied in points. The Sharks will have a makeshift lineup in place with Marty Havlat injured and unknown career journeyman Bracken Kearns -son of a former Canuck- getting his crack to provide the Sharks with some unexpected scoring punch.

So it's Good Guys Wear Teal against the Mean Old Whale. May the nicer team win!

Power points

1,100 for Jumbo, one big step for Sharks 

If the Sharks can bottle up anything from Saturday's 2-1 win -in regulation!!!!!- over the Nashville Predators,  it would be the above sequence that led to Joe Pavelski's eventual game-winning goal. It was the kind of determined and persistent hustle the struggling Sharks need to duplicate again and again if they're going to clearly break this funk they'd endured throughout the last month. What was an anemic power play that defined a miserable February of hockey epic failure had already scored one goal Saturday when Dan Boyle rifled in a one-timer through a traffic jam driven by Pavelski past screened Preds goalie Pekka Rinne.  Now it was time to grind out another goal. Pavelski and Couture chased Joe Thornton's deflected shot behind the net. Couture managed to flick the puck past former Shark Scott Hannan back in front of the net. Pavelski then epitomized the term "dogged" he can Couture worked for and flipped a shot off Rinne and into the goal (Thornton scored his 1,100th career point). All of a sudden a power play that found the net just three times covering 14 games managed two against one of the elite goalies in the NHL (though Rinne had struggled mightily in the previous three games, so perhaps it's not appropriate to get too excited yet)...


...Still, the Sharks needed something to feel good about after going 33 days without beating anyone in regulation and thus not giving away free points to overtime or shootout losers. Those precious three-point games are going to impact the playoff race in such a tightly-bunched Western Conference. How tough? With two points scored the Sharks jumped from ninth to fifth in the West. And though there was some nervous energy building after the Predators pulled within a goal with just over five minutes left in the third, San Jose held on to prevent Nashville from ensuring yet another overtime period at HP Pavilion. Now the Sharks must regain...

...Some mojo on the road. They head to constantly controversy-free Vancouver Tuesday night, and need to continue firing shots on goal after sending 39 at Rinne. Nine of the next 11 games are on hostile territory, and who knows if the Sharks will be aggressive as the April trade deadline looms? That's a good segue to saying a few words about Pavelski, who quietly continues to perform at a high level. Ross McKeon, the San Francisco's new/old beat writer who's back on board as a free-lancer, called Pavelski the team's midseason "Mr. Consistency"  during his midseason progress report for the Sharks.  This is what McKeon wrote even before Pavelski was arguably the best skater on the ice against Nashville:

Joe Pavelski just keeps chugging along, producing points, playing well in all situations and providing leadership.

Well put. I wondered last summer as Rick Nash-to-San Jose trade rumors bubbled but never came to a boil if Pavelski's solid two-way play throughout his career was worth being the lead piece in a deal to land the explosive scoring and rugged Nash. Obviously neither Columbus nor San Jose agreed on any trade, so it became moot. And Pavelski is one of the few A-list Sharks not bogged down by any no-trade or movement clauses, so if San Jose General Manager Doug Wilson is forced to make a blockbuster move, Pavelski provides one bargaining chip who he wouldn't need permission to trade. But as the Thornton's, Boyle's and Patrick Marleau's get closer and closer to the end of their contracts and their prime, it's probably for the best if Pavelski, still about a year-and-a-half south of 30, can stay a Shark and form the next generation of leaders along with Couture, Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Brent Burns. But the Sharks have to feel like there is still some -but not much- time left to make one last run at a Stanley Cup. However, there is still much to prove as San Jose heads north of the border. 

Baseball mojo

Driving with my pooch to the dog park this afternoon reminded me baseball season is approaching fast. The radio said as much, as it was my first opportunity to hear some spring training play-by-play of the Athletics' 6-3 win over Colorado in Phoenix. There's never too much to get excited about in exhibition baseball games, though Josh Reddick and Brandon Moss each homered and Tommy Milone threw a couple of scoreless innings. 

But what was fun about catching a couple innings of audio was the banter among A's announcers Ray Fosse, Ken Korach and Vince Cotroneo. What's about fun play-by-play in baseball is you have to fill air space during a sport that even in the most tense of situations still maintains a level of passive moments. So Fosse, Korach and Cotroneo did what good baseball radio guys do best: You enjoyed their recollections of spending together so many March afternoons and evenings in Arizona. There was a Bill King memory, an encounter with Bob Feller, some good-natured jabbering to each other.

It was a reminder of how low-key baseball can be, especially on lazy and meaningless spring training Saturdays.

Difficult to watch

"It's the same story every game. We have to find a way to score more goals. Personally and as a team, we have to find a way to put it into the back of the net. You're not going to win many games scoring one goal, and we've found that out lately."

—Sharks forward Logan Couture

By next Thursday, I'll be in the Pacific Northwest starting for at least two months, just about the time the Stanley Cup playoffs will be in full force. Considering I'll be out of Comcast SportsNet California range by then, my plan is to order the NHL GameCenter Live to I can keep track of Sharks games on my laptop. I'm now having second thoughts if that 50 bucks is worth spending, because it finally hit me last night: The Sharks are becoming unwatchable...

...It's not because the effort isn't there, or the team is that overmatched, or that Antti Niemi's mostly heroic play in goal should be ignored. But watching Thursday's 2-1 shootout defeat to the Detroit Red Wings was just so darn frustrating to see what should be at least an above average offensive team get repeatedly smothered by opposing bluelines and goalies. San Jose has scored just 16 goals in its last 12 games, and contrary to how little I care about a boring ESPN show, numbers indeed never lie as to why the Sharks have won just two of those 12 contests. This team has proven goal scorers (Patrick Marleau and Joe Pavelski), arguably the greatest playmaker of his era (Joe Thornton), one of the game's bright young stars (Logan Couture), a veteran who when healthy is a steady scorer (Marty Havlat), and a defenseman who's known as a premier power play quarterback from the point (Dan Boyle). Yet with all this firepower -and even knowing this team isn't getting a lot of scoring from the third or fourth lines- the Sharks stink on the offensive end, and it's gotten to be a tired act. Twelve games covering a 48-game season is exactly 25 percent of the year, and it's now a large enough sample size to argue this isn't working. The Sharks had every advantage going into the Detroit game: the Red Wings played (and lost) in Los Angeles 24 hours earlier and trotted out the less than Hasek-esqe backup goalie Jonas Gustavsson against the Sharks. But everyone looks like a Monster in goal against San Jose these days...

...And everyone in Teal looks as harmless as  this "Monster"  when it comes to firing the cookie into the jar. The Swedish Monster, in his first start as a Red Wing after he was chased out of Toronto for lack of productivity (the PC way to put it), stoned the Sharks save for a Couture one-timer in the third, a Sharks' lead that last all of 92 seconds. The Sharks couldn't get a puck Gustavsson otherwise, including three consecutive misses in the shootout. Todd McLellan, whose San Jose coaching seat may still be in the preheat stage but is warming nonetheless, clearly was losing his patience when asked about two odd-man rushes led by Marleau and Thornton that resulted in no shot taken and if he would have preferred more selfish play rather than a pass-first mentality that the Red Wings sniffed out both times:

“Yep, how’s that for an answer? I want to see Marleau shoot the puck, too. We talked about it between periods. We haven’t exactly been lighting it up. They’re smart people, they can watch the game and they know they’ve got to shoot the puck to score. It’s disappointing. We have those opportunities, we’ve got to make good on them. Other teams in the league are, we have to.”

I've got $50 and a laptop that says the Sharks need to start doing that soon or this season is toast. 

Two points? Take what you can get

I was trying to multi-task Tuesday night: Helping my niece put together an essay outline on Afghanistan for her high school history class, and keeping an eye on the Avalanche-Sharks game. As it turns out, both exercises were rather painful to be a part of! She trudged through and finished her assignment around the time the Sharks were barely fending off Colorado 3-2 in a shootout win at HP Pavilion. It was just the second time the Sharks had earned two points in a whopping 26 days, so there's little room to complain. Still....

...The Sharks should have won this game far more comfortably than they did. But that's what San Jose is right now, struggling to finish off victories even when controlling play for most of 65 minutes, yet still needing a couple of shootout goals from Michal Handzus and Patrick Marleau (in a rare SO appearance by the latter) to ensure the win. Somehow the Sharks were tied through regulation and overtime despite scoring a goal just 25 seconds thanks to Marty Havlat's forechecking, a brilliant Joe Thornton pass and Logan Couture blistering one-timer. They were tied despite outshooting Colorado 41-27 and getting five power plays to just two for the Avs (the Sharks dunked another donut again with the man advantage). And they were tied despite getting a rare goal from a forward not named Thornton, Marleau, Couture or Joe Pavelski when the embattled TJ Galiardi got his first of the season, fittingly against the man he was traded for Jamie McGinn from Galiardi's former team. That was a baby step for a team that still needs to address a weak spot of getting far too little secondary scoring...

...So let's look at it this way: San Jose needs to get on a bit of a roll starting about a week ago, and perhaps dominating play against an inferior opponent but still needing to grind out overtime and a shootout will actually keep this team grounded with two difficult games left on this short homestand. The respected but still abhorred Detroit Red Wings' arrival Thursday provides any Sharks' team with further incentive to take the ice focused on stringing together strong games. The Red Wings have  suffered from some perhaps a little post-Lidstrom-shock-syndrome, recently endured a five-game losing streak before winning two in a row, and like the Sharks are hovering around the playoff cutoff line.  So both teams should be expected to demanded that they play with some urgency. Detroit appearances in San Jose are always fun and filled with tension, so bring on the Winged Wheel.

Fast-fading Fins

Apologies for my absence for a few days. I just accepted a new short-term job opportunity that will soon take me out of the Bay Area for a couple months starting very soon. But I plan to still write some Sharks (and to a lesser extent, A's) posts on this site. But that's subject to change. I'll do my best to keep up. 

It's now put up or shut up time for several key figures in the San Jose Sharks' family. The general lack of offseason transactions/urgency looks more like a mistake than the brilliant move it appeared to be when the Sharks started off with seven victories in succession. Now nine losses, three resulting in a point each, in 10 games has likely kept everyone wondering what's in store for this team. The Sharks host Colorado tonight without Brent Burns (leg injury) and Ryane Clowe (completing a two-game suspension), and it's unsure if Marty Havlat and Tommy Wingels are 100 percent. So the clock is  ticking on what General Manager Doug Wilson will or should do to give his slumping team a boost.

In my mind, Wilson already blew his chance to shake up what looked like roster with some holes last summer after the Sharks appeared to be lagging behind the Western Conference's elite. Rick Nash to San Jose was feasible, though it likely would have cost Wilson at least Joe Pavelski and one of his young defensemen to have a shot at Nash. If not a big splash move like Nash, Wilson could have made a less sexy transaction to add some punch within the top six forwards. But Adam Burish was the team's only real addition up front, and even given a four-year deal he received to provide grit and toughness,  Burish wasn't expected to provide much in the offensive zone. That clearly put some pressure on third and fourth-line returnees Wingels, Michal Handzus and TJ Galiardi to contribute some secondary scoring. But that trio has been mostly non-existent with just two goals among them, and both were scored in the same game. The Scott Gomez experiment has scientifically failed, and unless he somehow can suddenly be a playmaker centering the Sharks' sputtering wings like Patrick Marleau and Havlat, he's no longer the kind of player to move the needle. Tim Kennedy can only do so much, and that lack of electricity from your bottom six options is magnified when your big guns are misfiring as often as wingers  Marleau, Joe Pavelski, Havlat and Clowe have during the Sharks' drought. Essentially, the team's only "dangerous" snipers have combined for six of 12 total goals scored in the last 10 games.

I don't get paid to make hockey decisions, but by now with almost half the season completed, the Sharks could use an offensive pick-me-up. Granted, there isn't much in the prospect pool -unless young goalies are in play- for the Sharks to make a trade for a forward capable of providing some goals without weakening another position. Burns' slow start coming off hernia surgery and his current leg issues complicate matters, but given how well young Matt Irwin filled in when Burns couldn't start the season, the Sharks seem to have some competent defensemen to deal. Either Justin Braun or Jason Demers are logical candidates. Perhaps Wilson could package one with one of his young goaltenders like Alex Stalock or Harri Sateri and return some value that can help now. Is there a combination that could secure someone like talented Buffalo veteran Jason Pomminville, or more realistically at the level of Columbus' Vinny Prospal? And could the Sharks' rather precarious salary cap total handle that kind of trade anyway numbers-wise?

The answer is complex, not for a team with so many veterans holding no trade or no movement clauses getting in the way. But it's becoming clear the Sharks can't stand pat with the roster they currently have. And no, I don't believe firing Coach Todd McLellan is the solution, either. Tonight's game should be one even the depleted, banged-up Sharks should not lose. But they just might because the Sharks are not very good right now, and teams seem to be sensing that and seizing the opportunity.

Not good enough

The Sharks are simply no longer an elite team in the Western Conference. I think it finally hit me tonight watching them put up a respectable effort in Chicago one week after looking feeble against one of the best clubs in the West. But as is, the Sharks, much like last season, will have to dig deep as the season wears on to make the playoffs. There just appears to be too much missing to be a serious threat to beat   a team like Chicago in a seven-game series. The Sharks haven't even faced the teeth of the Pacific Division portion of their schedule, and the Pacific seems top to bottom the most competitive in the Western Conference. The Blackhawks made it 17 games without a regulation defeat, an NHL first to begin a season, with a workmanlike 2-1 victory over San Jose Friday. The Sharks have lost eight of nine games overall, and in the first five games of a six-game road trip, they've mustered just three of a possible 12 available points. The Sharks have some good things going right now, but the cons seem to...

...outweigh the pros to continue much longer without some kind of trade for help scoring goals both five-on-five and on what has become a dreadful power play. The Sharks have converted just twice on their last 46 man advantage situations spanning 11 games.  And they're not any more lethal at even strength. Eleven goals in 10 games is the most simplistic reason why this team has dropped nine of those contests. What stung most of all was the Blackhawks' winning goal 2:24 into the third period. Short-handed as the Sharks were again not generating a dangerous power play that was down to the final seconds, Brandon Saad skated up the ice to get the puck out of the defensive zone. While Brent Burns seemed to have a lot of room to challenge Saad, the defenseman seemed rather docile and unaggressive when Saad let fly with an angled but hardly wicked shot that somehow beat Niemi, who shifted to protect the near post but left the far post tantalizingly open. Sharks' Coach Todd McLellan had the quote of the night in discussing that sequence that neither Burns nor Niemi will want on their highlight reels;

“I thought we let a player that wasn’t very dangerous – not because he’s not very talented, or anything – but a player in a situation that wasn’t very dangerous, skate into a primary scoring spot without even challenging him,” McLellan said. “Then, I’m not sure if our goalie was on the angle or not, but [I’m] disappointed we didn’t challenge him earlier.”

So the question now is it panic time or stay the course time? Surely, with an improved penalty kill and goalie Antti Niemi doing maybe his best work in the crease of his Sharks' tenure, San Jose is capable of being better than it's recent free-fall indicates. But the Sharks are not getting anywhere near enough from Joe Thornton, Ryane Clowe and Martin Havlat. And the bottom six forward depth just seems about invisible when it matters. Consider that six forwards have played a combined 71 games and yet to score one goal. Now, no one expects rugged Adam Burish to find the back of the net much, but TJ Galiardi and Clowe have zero goals between them, Havlat has totaled a meager five points, and Thornton managed only one goal and two assists in February. You wonder how much longer the front office will hold out before making a move to add another forward to the roster via a trade. Tonight's game at Dallas isn't a must win just yet, but with every defeat General Manager Doug Wilson has to be thinking "Is it time to change it up and bring in some new blood"?