Author: M Walsh

Goalies and Go-Getters: NHL Playoffs

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By Mary Walsh

Watching the French team beat the Canadians in the World Championships was one of the most entertaining viewing experiences I have had in a while. Even though I had to keep clicking through ad popups, exposing my computer to who knows what kind of hazards, the game was riveting. Sure, it went to a shootout, after a couple of power play goals from the French kept them in the game. Goalie Cristobal Huet also kept them in the game, neutralizing the not yet ready for prime time Canadian team. But who doesn’t love to see an underdog steal one?

The French are not the only underdogs playing right now. The Montreal Canadiens, though their record hardly looks like an underdog’s, had the Boston Bruins on the ropes for a bit. I wonder how many people became Habs fans then? It isn’t that the Bruins are so easy to root against, but they won the Cup so recently, and they are reputed to be big tough guys. The Habs are supposed to be quick and light in the way they play. (Hence the utter confusion about the Douglas Murray signing.) Yet even if the Bruins are the hounds and the Canadiens the foxes, it usually takes several hounds to take down one fox. That makes us root for the fox. We know one hound could never catch a fox on his own, but it still seems unfair to gang up on the little fox like that.

The thing is, it isn’t true. Apart from Zdeno Chara, the Bruins are not bigger than average for an NHL team, and the Canadiens are not small. Even their playing styles are exaggerated– the Bruins play fast whenever possible, and the Canadiens don’t scamper around the rink without standing their ground defensively.

Neither team shows the defensive recklessness of some teams (hello Pittsburgh), though both teams get reliable goaltending. Tuuka Rask and Carey Price are both exceptional, in their prime, and playoff hardened. Neither has been surprising in a good way or a bad way. They have performed as expected: very well.

The teams were more evenly matched than advertised, but hyperbole makes it a better story.

What is not exaggerated are their respective playoff records. The Bruins won the Cup in 2011 and made it to the Finals last season. The Habs haven’t been to the Conference Finals since 2010, and they haven’t won a Cup since 1993. One of these teams is due, the other has won recently enough to remember the way clearly. The latter will not go quietly, if at all. The Bruins demonstrated as much by taking the lead in the series on Saturday.

Here in the West, Sharks fans may or may not be watching the Freeway Series between the Los Angeles Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. If they are watching, they may have noticed how strange it is that two teams that did so well at home have now turned into road warriors, if across town really counts as a road game. In any case, it is strange to see the Ducks cast in the underdog role, since they were so dominant in the regular season.

One of the more talked about issues is the way Bruce Boudreau has been handling the Anaheim goaltenders. He pulled Frederik Andersen twice before he had to be replaced for injury, always putting Jonas Hiller in. Hiller has played well, has experience, and probably deserved to start Saturday. But the Ducks started the season overloaded with young goaltending talent. They even traded one away to the Oilers, they had so many goalies. Now they can’t seem to find one the coach can rely on.

It doesn’t really breed confidence, to keep switching goaltenders. It also doesn’t breed confidence to have a goalie the team doesn’t trust to make all the stops he needs to make. Here is the problem with that– some teams play better defense with a backup in the net, precisely because they don’t trust him. Doesn’t it make more sense to give defense extra attention, no matter who is in goal? What if your awesome unbeatable goalie has an off night? It wouldn’t matter if you were helping him out enough.

See the Minnesota Wild and Ilya Bryzgalov for how to make it work. Bryzgalov has one of the most mercurial records in the NHL. This season alone, he had to claw his way back into the league after starting off signed to a PTO with an ECHL team. He is not stealing games for Minnesota, but they are doing pretty well for a team working on its fourth goalie in the season. In response, he is playing better behind them.

See the LA Kings and Jonathan Quick in Games 1 & 2 against Sharks for how to let it take you down. No matter how the Sharks lit him up, it took the Kings two games to figure out that their super-duper goalie was not going to win the game for them and he needed some help. Once they gave it to him all was well, but how it could take them so long to get their act together is mind-boggling.

They say that a goalie has to steal a couple of games along the road to a Stanley Cup. That may be true but it seems awfully risky to assume that your team is going to simply fall apart for a game or two along the way. Yes, if a Sharks goalie had stolen a game, or two, maybe they would still be in it. But after the way the Sharks played in Game 5, did they deserve to be?

Sometimes a team has no choice but to flip flop goalies through the playoffs. The 2010 Flyers made it as far as the Finals, changing starting goalies mid-playoffs due to injury. Michael Leighton had only been cleared to play the day before he replaced Brian Boucher, and each goaltender gave exceptional performances in turn. In the end, they were still being swapped mid-game, I suspect because neither was truly 100% healthy. Through it all, the rest of the team held it together, killed themselves on defense (Ian LaPerriere almost literally) and went further than the Sharks have ever gone.

Maybe confidence is over-rated. Maybe will is all.

Antti Niemi was a raw rookie in his first season of North American hockey when he won. He didn’t even play in the minors. The Blackhawks made due. There really is no sure-thing formula for the role goaltending plays in a Cup run. Everyone needs to pull their weight and a little more if possible. Should it matter to the Ducks whether Anderson or Hiller or Gibson is behind them? No. If the puck is behind them, they need to get it back in front of them ASAP, no matter who is perched in the paint. That’s a good rule for any team to follow.

Remember the Alamo: Sharks Have A Lot To Think About

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By Mary Walsh

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say. Then again, sometimes things that can kill you do, in fact, kill you, and many things that cause you no pain at all can make you stronger. Pain, loss and failure are not necessary ingredients for success, they are just common obstacles you must overcome on the road to pretty much anywhere. So what do you do with a humiliating meltdown performed at the very worst moment, on a national stage? Assuming it has not killed you, you can remember it and nurse that awful feeling until you have a chance to redeem yourself. Or not.

Friday, some Sharks shared their present thoughts with the media. It had been less than 48 hours since the team made a historically noteworthy playoff exit. As one of only four teams to give up a 3-0 series lead to be defeated in the seventh game, they will be remembered for choking in the worst way.

Todd McLellan was asked what went wrong, what lead to the loss of a series the Sharks lead by three games to none.

I spoke about this at the press conference after the game and my opinion hasn’t changed one bit. In fact, I’m a little more frustrated at this point than I was even at that point, if you can believe it. We got beat in a number of different areas. The core of their group stepped up and performed at a very high level, ours fell off a little bit and my disappointment is as much or greater now than it was at at that moment.

What added to the frustration?

Probably having the chance to go back and look at it again. It is what it is, we went and looked at it again and it just makes us more frustrated.

Joe Thornton was asked if he had any explanation for what went on in the last four games.

No. I think I’ll think about that, you know, probably until next year sometime. You know, the way we played in the first three games and then what we did in the last four, it’s mind-boggling. And I think I will lose sleep probably for the next couple of months for sure on that.

Tommy Wingels was asked if playing in World Championships next week would help get the taste of the loss out of his mouth.

It won’t do it. It’s an honor to play for them and to an extent you’re excited when you get asked but without a doubt I’d much rather be playing for a Stanley Cup still. Regardless of what happens over there the disappointment of what happened isn’t going to go away, and to be honest that’ll be on my mind the entire time.

Patrick Marleau was asked about this series as a defining moment for the Sharks.

Yeah, it’s obviously a low point for us. Like you said it’s going to be with us for a long time so we have to use that as a motivational tool to get better and to learn from it and to know that you never want to feel this way again.

Scott Hannan was asked if, after time to think about it, there were any answers to how the series came unravelled.

No, there’s not, it’s disappointing, it’s gut wrenching that this happened. We’re going to have to deal with that for a while until we can set things right and turn it around. It’s going to eat away at you all summer and all next year.

Brent Burns was asked if he had any additional thoughts after a day and a half.

I think it’s still pretty fresh. It’s still tough, you’re not really prepared for it to be over. Nothing new. Waking up today it’s tough, it’s hard to imagine what happened but it’s sure to take a long time.

Dan Boyle was asked how his last couple of days had gone.

Horrible. This is the first time I left my house since I got back after the game. It’s definitely the worst loss of my career and yeah, I’m not going to get over this for a long time. This one hurts a lot.

Marc-Edouard Vlasic was asked if this is a series worth remembering.

I mean, Boston won the Cup the year after they did what we did this year.

Did he think that humiliation motivated the Bruins?

Probably, they had something to prove. When you sweep and then get swept it’s embarrassing and hopefully we do the same.

One recurring theme in all of the locker cleanout interviews was  that the loss would take a long time to get over. Will the Sharks’ disastrous 2014 playoff ousting stay with them, in a way that might be productive? How will they respond? Raffi Torres said:

We just gotta figure out what we want to do here. Do we want to be a team that lives with the past, is this going to haunt us and just do the same thing over and over again? Or are we really gonna get pissed off and come back and see what we’re really all about. You gotta have a year, you know. Yeah, we’re gonna win a lot of games next year and probably going to make the playoffs again, but at the end of the day if you don’t show up and really want it, and really want to win, it’s not going to happen.

Of course, Doug Wilson has some work to do. In cases such as these, when an otherwise competitive team falls apart in the clutch, a common response is to fire the coach. That is clearly not something Wilson is in a hurry to do, nor should he be. How do you replace one of the top coaches in the league? It would be, to say the least, a gamble. And it was another recurring theme in the interviews: the players did not blame the coach. Antti Niemi put it concisely:

He’s been a great coach obviously and we played winning hockey all the time. And we have great systems we play, the whole team followed the systems and I think we worked hard. So I think he’s been a great coach, the whole coaching staff has been great.

It is rare for players to voice criticisms of their coach, and in any case it doesn’t answer the question: would another coach get better results, at least in the short run?

To study how teams fare after this particular failure you have to work with an impossibly small sample size. In the most recent example, the Boston Bruins did not replace their coach or significantly alter their core group. They did add several significant players, so the San Jose roster may need to be bolstered. Then again, those were the Bruins, not the Sharks. When you only have four cases and only two in the last quarter century, it would be folly to think you have a pattern to follow.

The only player in this narrative not available for comment Friday was Sharks majority owner Hasso Plattner. What he will make of the situation, what he might do about it, is difficult to even guess at. Possibly the most frustrating part of this is that such humiliation only happens to the best teams. It is not humiliating unless you have a team that should have won. That is why two of those other three were able to win the Stanley Cup so soon after squandering three game leads in the playoffs. It is an awful feeling for Sharks and their fans, but at least it is proof that they are close enough to success to amplify failure into a disaster on a par with the Alamo, minus the fatalities of course.

One of Three Sevens: Sharks, Kings Must Win or Go Home

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By Mary Walsh

Seven. Each NHL Playoff round is a best of seven games, and three of eight first round match-ups have gone the distance. Second round dates have already been set, even for the Penguins who do not yet know who they will play.

With three Game Sevens today, it seems likely that we will see at least one upset… if you define upset as the triumph of the team with the lower position in the standings. In the case of the Pacific Division contest, the predictions have been for the third place team to upset the second place team all along, so would that even count as an upset? Is it really an upset if it was expected? Will the Kings live up to expectations, or will the Sharks reassert themselves?

All three of today’s games came to be with a Game Six win won by three goals. The Flyers and the Wild both beat their opponents 5-3 and the Kings beat the Sharks Jose 4-1. A little more eerie than that is the Philadelphia connection to Los Angeles: Mike Richards and Jeff Carter were both part of the Flyers team that upset the Bruins in 2010, and now they are in another Game Seven after a three game comeback, while their old team is playing a Game Seven on the same day.

The Sharks are not playing in three games, only one. They are not even playing in seven games, they only have one tonight. Is it any different from any other game? Sharks forward Logan Couture said:

Every playoff game has a different atmosphere compared to a regular season game. I mean, guys know, obviously, what’s at stake. I don’t think it’s any big difference.

Playing in and winning a Game Seven is every young hockey player’s dream. But after squandering a three game lead in the series, the Sharks might be feeling some extra pressure. This morning, Sharks defenseman Dan Boyle was asked about the fun and the pressure of a Game Seven:

This is fun, you know everyone’s going to talk about how we got to this point but at this point it really doesn’t matter. We’re in Game Seven, we got to win a hockey game to move on and we’re at home. So you’re right this is fun and we’ve got to channel our energy the right way.

The Kings won three games in a row, as did the Sharks, but the Kings played all of those games with the threat of elimination hanging over them. They were all “win or go home” situations. Is it any different for the Sharks now that they too must win or go home? This morning, Sharks defenseman Jason Demers said:

I don’t think so. But it’s like I said, it’s just about executing. You can talk as much as you want about x’s and o’s, but it’s just about executing those x’s and o’s… Just executing when we need to execute to win.

Sharks head coach Todd McLellan’s approach to the win or go home situation is to go back to his core group:

I think our core on our team has to step up, and they were there early in the series. LA’s core has been there later in the series. Tonight’s the deciding game and in my opinion Nemo’s a very big part of that core and they’re going to get their chance to perform in Game Seven.

It is April 30, 2014, or 4/30/14. Add month and day together without the zeros and you get seven. Divide the year by two and you get seven. All three games start in the seventh hour, two of them at seven sharp. It seems like it should mean something, but I can’t tell what that is or what could possibly be done about it. Probably a safe bet that everyone should steer clear of deadly sins.

Sharks goaltender Antti Niemi said his routine would not change for this game:

I just got to think about my own game… and do the same things to get ready as I do every day.

Sounds like a plan.

Lose-Lose Game 5 for Sharks

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By Mary Walsh

Just one win. It felt like a must-win game for the Sharks, even though the Kings were the ones on the verge of elimination. The Sharks were healthy and confident.

All the Sharks needed was one win after a tight overtime victory on the road in Los Angeles. Instead, they lost two in a row, giving a resilient Kings team more than enough confidence to push through two more wins.

Additionally, the Sharks lost Marc-Edouard Vlasic for two periods and possibly longer. Statistically, the only consolation for that would be if Jarret Stoll were suspended for taking him out. That could help the Sharks with their faceoffs anyway. If Vlasic is out for one or more games, it would not be a fair trade but it would be something.

Did the Sharks approach these last two games like they had four tries to get it right? Does this mulligan theory come into play? I doubt it. The Kings just have more urgency since their season is at death’s door. But that does not explain losing 3-0 at home, even playing with five defensemen.

The lone bright spot in Saturday’s shutout loss was a stellar performance from Alex Stalock. He faced 22 shots and stopped them all. He came in early in the second period after 3 of 19 shots got by Antti Niemi.

Still, the team in front of Stalock could not seem to help him out. He did more than his part, distributing the puck well, making the saves and even drawing a penalty. But the Sharks couldn’t score to save their lives even when they had some chances at the end of Saturday’s game.

That might be unsurprising after the amount of puck luck they had in the first two games. Their lack of composure in the rest of the game was not a matter of puck luck. The Kings’ early goals seemed to dismantle any confidence the Sharks started with. Hurried passes turned into giveaways, too-slow decisions hampered the power play. The only thing the Sharks did well were some of their penalty kills.

Two goals against should not send a team into a panic, not in a series that has featured such high scores. Letting the game get away from them like that is cause for panic. Now they go back to Los Angeles with an opponent on a roll and still fueled by desperation.

Maybe the Sharks can borrow some of that desperation before they are looking at a seventh game, tired and banged up and in no shape to dominate a next round– if they make it that far. Sharks fans can but hope.

Deja Vu Puts Sharks Up By Two

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By Mary Walsh

SAN JOSE- Sunday, the San Jose Sharks defeated the Los Angeles Kings to take a 2-0 series lead in the Stanley Cup Quarter Finals. The game winner was scored by Justin Braun, Antti Niemi made 24 saves for the Sharks, and Jonathan Quick made 33 saves for the Kings on 40 San Jose Shots. Though the Kings scored first, the Sharks’ dominance through the second two periods was a repeat of an unexpectedly dominant Game One victory.

After the game, Mike Brown said:

Games like this, you don’t stop playing, you don’t give up. That’s how the whole series is going to go and you see what happened when we didn’t stop.

We’re planning on low-scoring games and we gotta play solid defensively. So we can’t really look at these two games and think that the series is gonna go this way.

After a 6-3 victory in Game One series, everyone knew that the Sharks would not have to navigate the mental burden of a five goal lead again. It turns out that everyone was wrong. The Sharks defeated the Kings Sunday by a score of 7-2, scoring seven unanswered goals in the second and third periods. They not only took the five goal lead, they held it until the end of the game.

Talking after the game, Sharks captain Joe Thornton summed up the Sharks’ success thus far:

To do that two games in a row… We’ve been working hard for our goals, and the fourth line just brought this game back in grip for us. But scoring seven tonight… it was… was just a weird night.

That fourth line was the clutch factor in the game. The combination of Andrew Desjardins, Raffi Torres and Mike Brown scored the first two Sharks goals of the game, bringing the Sharks back from a deficit to a tie game in the space of five minutes. After the game, Logan Couture said of the trio:

They got us going, they generate a lot of energy in the building, a lot of energy on our bench. You can tell when they’re out there that they’re going to forecheck hard and if I was a d-man I’d be scared of those guys bearing down on me all the time. So they’ve done a great job in this series.

The Kings opened the scoring under two minutes in. A Jake Muzzin shot from the point went past Sharks goalie Antti Niemi with some help from a screen set up by Marian Gaborik. Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar were awarded the assists.

The Sharks responded with a good chance of their own but Kings goalie Jonathan Quick had time and space to see the shots and stop them.

After an extended spell in their own zone, and numerous takeaways for both teams, the Kings struck again. Kings forward Jeff Carter got the puck away from Sharks defenseman Jason Demers and sent it in front of the net where Trevor Lewis tapped it in the far corner. Carter got credit for the lone assist.

By the half way point of the first period, the shots favored the Sharks 10-6, but the score was all Kings, 2-0.

One of the Sharks’ better shifts came from an offensive zone attack that included Tomas Hertl, Tommy Wingels and Scott Hannan, with about six minutes left in the first. As the shot clock indicated, the other lines were spending time in the Kings’ zone but they did not make life very uncomfortable for Quick. Many of their shots were completely unscreened.

Mike Brown gave the fans something to cheer about with some solid hits in the final four minutes, and the Thornton line joined in with a scrum in front of the Kings’ crease. Two penalties came out of that: two minutes each for roughing to Slava Voynov and Brent Burns.

The Sharks ended the first period with a two-goal deficit and a reduced lead in shots, with 15 to the Kings’ 10.

Early in the second period, Tomas Hertl took the ice with Joe Thornton and Brent Burns, after taking a shift with Burns and Desjardins moments earlier.

That did not seem to do much, but the Sharks avoided being scored on for almost five minutes, then reversed the dismal trend with a goal of their own. It was Mike Brown’s first playoff goal. Andrew Desjardins centered a pass that found Brown skating into the Kings’ zone. Brown’s shot beat Quick fair and square from the slot.

Moments later, the Sharks got their first power play of the game. That produced a few good chances but did not add to the scoresheet.

It was near the half-way mark of the game when Raffi Torres scored his second of the series. After skating through traffic alongside Desjardins, he found an opening and tied the game. Assist to Andrew Desjardins.

About a minute later, Los Angeles got their first power play after Jason Demers was called for charging. It took the Sharks over 90 seconds to clear the puck for the first time in that penalty kill, but when they did they were rewarded by some inattention from the Kings that lead to an icing. With under 20 seconds left in the penalty the faceoff was in the Kings’ end. That was that and both teams remained perfect on the penalty kill.

The Sharks kept the pressure on. With 5:15 left in the period, James Sheppard won the puck along the boards and put it on net from a bad angle. The rebound went to the wall and Justin Braun, who shot it back in from the point. His hard shot flew by Tommy Wingels and Jonathan Quick to give the Sharks their first lead of the game. Assists went to Sheppard and Pavelski.

The Kings took a third penalty to finish the second, putting the Sharks on the power play to end the middle frame. It was an uninspiring power play, with the Kings ejecting the Sharks very effectively from their zone more than once before San Jose could get set up.

The period ended with shots 27-17 and the score 3-2 Sharks.

Tomas Hertl stayed on the Thornton line, with Pavelski playing third line center. The next goal did not come from either of those lines. The Sharks’ fourth goal came off a brilliant rush from the second line at 1:08 of the period. Matt Nieto centered the puck perfectly for Patrick Marleau who carried it as far as the opposite faceoff circle to put it by Jonathan Quick. Nieto and Logan Couture got the assists.

A nice neutral zone poke check from Scott Hannan started the next rush, sending the puck in for James Sheppard. Sheppard and the third line held the zone well, but it took a second neutral zone takeaway and another rush to put the Sharks up by three. Joe Pavelski scored that, after Dan Boyle  got the puck to him at the Kings’ blue line. The Kings were in the middle of a line change when Boyle snatched away that puck. Assists to Boyle and Wingels.

At 11:42 of the period, Marleau carried the puck in along the wall and passed it to Couture. Couture skated around two Los Angeles defenders to beat and unscreened Quick, who was moving across the crease.

6-2 Sharks. Assists to Marleau and Nieto.

A scrum at the Kings’ net resulted in a few penalties being doled out. Four minutes to LA for roughing, and two to San Jose for roughing. The offenders were Kings defenseman Matt Greene and Sharks’ forward Raffi Torres. Once again on the power play, the Sharks would not score in the five on four advantage, but just 30 seconds in to that penalty, Jarret Stoll gave the Sharks a two man advantage by high-sticking Joe Thornton and going to the box for two minutes.

After some nice passing around the perimeter, Thornton was left holding the puck in the right faceoff circle, with just Jonathan Quick between him and the Sharks’ seventh goal.

7-2 Sharks. The seventh goal assists went to Pavelski and Boyle. It was the Sharks’ first power play goal of the game.

With just over five minutes left, more hostilities broke out, sending several players to the locker room early and putting the Sharks on the power play again. For LA, Kyle Clifford got two minutes for roughing and a ten minute misconduct, Dustin Brown got a ten minute misconduct. For San Jose, Desjardins received a ten minute misconduct and Mike Brown got the same. Finally, the Kings’ Mike Richards went to the box for four minutes, confined for spearing.

As expected, Todd McLellan did not alter his lineup for Game Two from the group that won Game One. The scratches were Martin Havlat, Tyler Kennedy, Bracken Kearns, Matt Irwin and Adam Burish. He did exercise his right of misdirection by putting Havlat out for warmups but that was all we saw of Number 9 on Sunday.

The Sharks and the Kings meet for Game Three on Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Sharks and Kings Keeping it Interesting

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By Mary Walsh

With arch rivals and married couples, the key to a thriving relationship is continuing to surprise each other. The party line between professional sports teams, of course, is that with all the history and scouting and preparation, neither team will be able to surprise the other. But if that were true they wouldn’t have to play the game, would they?

Can there be any surprises between the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings? No, said Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic before Game One between San Jose and Los Angeles:

There’ll be no surprises out there. Played enough against each other in that past couple years, last year in the playoffs, three years ago in the playoffs, so not surprising at all.

Of the kind of surprises you expect to see in a game, Vlasic said:

You can surprise them by the way you come out and play. But surprises as in we don’t know what they’re gonna do and they don’t know what we’re gonna do. No, we know LA in here, they know us, well enough to know there’s no surprises out there. But the team that comes out and dictates the game will have the advantage off the start.

Seems like Vlasic predicted the game pretty accurately. Still… if there were no surprises they would not play the games. Some surprises are to be expected in any game, especially NHL playoff games.

I imagine the Los Angeles Kings were at least a little surprised to see Vlasic rushing up the ice on a very scary (for LA) short-handed chance. Later, his shot off the post landed right in Raffi Torres’ lap, so to speak, for the game winner. I think those might be called surprises. That last one had to be a little difficult to plan.

Before Game One, Kings’ head coach Darryl Sutter was asked if the Sharks could do anything to surprise the Kings:

I don’t think system-wise, neither team is going to do that because of how good they are. There’s a reason you get here, there’s a reason that you have such good regular seasons, there’s a reason that you have playoffs spots clinched with a few games left.

What happens in playoff time, a lot of time what separates winner or loser is not the team part of it, it’s the individual part of it. So there’s somebody that steps up and goes to another level or somebody that doesn’t, that’s usually at the end, what… when you call it a surprise or whatever that is, that’s usually what happens.

We have already seen some game results that were not widely anticipated. Detroit defeating Boston was only expected by those who knew the Red Wings’ speed was a better weapon against the Bruins than it would have been against the Penguins. Still, there’s a little David and Goliath going on there. And it was still a one-goal game.

Which brings me to the most unsurprising surprise of the playoffs so far: that the Sharks were one of just two teams to win Game One by a margin of more than one goal. That a game would turn out differently than anticipated is not surprising, but for the Kings to be so badly run over by the Sharks in the first two periods was unusual.

Dan Boyle’s pregame comments described what the Sharks expected in Game One, in particular from the Kings goaltender:

With Quick back there, you’ve certainly got to earn your goals…We don’t expect to score many goals. We’d like to but we’re going to have to play good defense.

So scoring six goals, only one into an empty net, was surprising.

Tomas Hertl scoring in his first playoff game was to count as a little surprising, especially after missing so much of the season getting his knee repaired.

The third period was not surprising, since a team hardly ever maintains momentum with a five-goal lead. It seems like it should be surprising, but if a two or three goal lead is dangerous, what does a five goal lead do to a team? Such a thing in the playoffs must be unsettling.

It would be folly to expect a repeat of any of that. The Kings will probably be more ready to start, and the Sharks are unlikely to face the mental challenge of another dizzying lead.

Game One might have given the Sharks a bigger advantage than the series lead. It gave Tomas Hertl and Raffi Torres a chance to get up to game speed, maybe even playoff game speed. Those are weapons the Kings probably didn’t want the Sharks to prime.

Todd McLellan opted to play Mike Brown and not have Martin Havlat in the lineup. Havlat is not a natural fit on the fourth line, but Brown was not especially helpful there either. Maybe, probably, McLellan will surprise us Sunday. He does have a few options to work with. But which would be more surprising, changing a lineup that won, or sticking with one that perhaps could be improved on?

Both teams will put Game One behind them Sunday, and perhaps they will serve up something even more predictably surprising.

Sharks As Ready As They Can Be

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-By Mary Walsh

The San Jose Sharks finished the regular season with a little bit of everything: an improbable and awful shutout loss to the Predators, a frustrating loss to the Ducks, a lopsided victory over the Avalanche, and a win with some high points against the Coyotes. What does this portend about the 2014 playoffs? Not much for certain, but there are clues.

The team has a roster to make fans hopeful. Tomas Hertl is back, Raffi Torres should be soon. Martin Havlat’s scoring engine is sparking to life. A hat trick against Colorado threw some light on that. Add these pieces to a team that has been very successful without them, and the roster looks pretty hot.

The absence of those pieces gave others a chance to shoulder the burden through the 2013-14 season. Matt Nieto, Tommy Wingels and James Sheppard all increased their public profile considerably this season. They did more than fill holes. They each thrived and grew their games, developing into legitimate scoring threats and versatile, reliable members of the team.

The usual suspects, Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau and Logan Couture all pulled their weight and more. Joe Pavelski hit the 41 goal mark to end the regular season. If the final game in Phoenix left something to be desired, at least it provided that bonus. Pavelski had a career season, can the team follow suit?

The team has young veteran defensemen, if one can call them that. Players like Jason Demers and Marc-Edouard Vlasic are both younger than their NHL records suggest. They play beyond their years. More recent arrivals in San Jose like Justin Braun and (even more recent) Matt Irwin bolster that good mix of youth and experience.

With Dan Boyle playing more like his old self, the Sharks defense looks dangerous. If Brad Stuart and/or Scott Hannan are healthy enough, they fill out the blue line more smoothly than players who might be called up.

Antti Niemi had a bad game and a couple of good ones this week. If he can  benefit from the added rest he has had, he should regain playoff form. If he is not in top form, the team has a backup that the coaching staff has confidence in.

The team appears more healthy than an NHL playoff contender is expected to be when the regular season ends. The Sharks are as ready to face the Los Angeles Kings as they could be. Well, they might have been more ready in the second round but there is no point in crying over lost points.

Let the games begin.

What Might Have Been: Why the Sharks Wanted to Avoid the Kings

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By Mary Walsh

After the 3-0 loss to the Nashville Predators Saturday night, the odds are pretty slim that the San Jose Sharks will face anyone but the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. Facing the Kings carries an expectation of excessive wear and tear. But there are more reasons than that for the Sharks to have preferred a different opponent for the first round. It is worth looking at how they match up against the Kings, as opposed to the Wild and the Stars, the most likely Wild Card candidates.

The Sharks have beaten each of the three teams twice this season, but they lost to the Kings three times, and only once to each of the other two. All three games against the Stars went to overtime, and except for one 4-1 loss, all the games against the Kings were one goal games. Only the games against the Wild were mostly two-goal games.

The Sharks hold a slight lead over the Stars in goal per game, made more slight on Saturday. The Sharks now average 2.90 to the Stars’ 2.88. The Kings and the Wild trail both teams significantly.

On the defensive side, the Kings gave up the fewest goals per game this season, with a miniscule 2.05. The Sharks are not far behind in the rankings at fourth. Numerically, the gap is bigger with the Sharks averaging 2.34 goals against. The Wild are just a hair behind that with 2.38. Dallas is the conspicuous standout here, having given up an average of 2.77 goals per game.

The Wild is the only one of the three with better power play results for the season, at 18% to the Sharks’ 17.6%. The Kings come close in penalty killing at 82.9%, but the Sharks still did better there than any of the possible opponents with 84.4%.

The Sharks and the Kings are first and second in faceoffs, while the Wild are 13th and the Stars 15th. The Sharks would have had a clear advantage against either of the latter there.

In goaltending, the Sharks’ starter Antti Niemi only has the advantage over the Dallas goaltenders. The Kings’ Jonathan Quick has turned in another statistically excellent season. Even the Minnesota goalie carousel has produced better results on average. The Wild have had some bad luck with the health of their goaltenders, and they will probably rely on recently-acquired Ilya Bryzgalov to start the playoffs. Josh Harding has returned to practice but there is no timeline on his return to play. Minnesota’s backup, Darcy Kuemper, has played well in his rookie season but he is not ready to carry the full load of a playoff team. Bryzgalov has not played many games in the NHL this season but he has played pretty well, including a shutout of the Penguins Saturday.

The Sharks’ Alex Stalock has excellent numbers but has started fewer than 20 games and is unlikely to be the playoff starter. He has played extremely well, but in limited appearances against select opponents. It would be unreasonable to expect the Sharks to give him the edge over Niemi.

Los Angeles defenseman Drew Doughty left Thursday’s game against the Sharks after an odd collision, but it isn’t clear how long that will keep the Kings’ lynchpin blueliner out of the game. His absence would of course benefit the Sharks.

It certainly would have been a better matchup for the Sharks to play the Wild, unless the uncertain status of the Wild goaltending tripped the Sharks up as it seems invariably to do. Additionally, the Sharks have had trouble beating teams well below them in the standings lately. Would that carry over to the playoffs? Probably not, but it is something to consider as a faint consolation.

In any case, it all appears moot since the Sharks still trail the Ducks and only have three games left to overtake them. The Kings will most likely be their dance partner in the first round, with only home ice to bolster San Jose’s chances. If Tomas Hertl returns for the second round, and if Raffi Torres returns for the first, the Sharks still have a shot to go deep, but they will have to get by Los Angeles with a minimum of casualties.

“Must-Win” Marathon Could Benefit Sharks

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By Mary Walsh

The San Jose Sharks fell behind the Anaheim Ducks again with Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche. While other teams are in a race to make the playoffs, the Sharks are in a race to not face the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. That would be a good thing to avoid, but the Sharks’ schedule won’t make it easy.

Even with a home ice advantage, the Sharks could anticipate a physically gruelling first round if they face the Kings. Los Angeles does present an uncommonly heavy-hitting adversary, but playoff hockey is rough no matter who the opponent is. Minnesota, Phoenix or Dallas will come ready play hard in their own way.  The Sharks’ particular history with the Kings carries extra baggage but history lives only in our heads. If the Sharks face someone else in the first round, they could lose as easily, especially if they underestimate their opponent just because it isn’t Los Angeles.

The Ducks finish the regular season playing five of eight games against teams in the bottom third of the standings. The Sharks play three of six games against top eight teams to finish. One of the other games is against the Phoenix Coyotes, who may well be fighting for a playoff spot to the last game. The race against the Ducks won’t be easy for the Sharks to win.

On the other hand, whether they catch the Ducks or not, the Sharks will have a chance to elevate their game because they are facing such good competition. That could benefit them no matter who they play in the first round. The Sharks, like many good teams, can stumble in “should win” situations. The risk of injury or fatigue could outweigh the mental conditioning benefits of tough games, but over a span of six games the physical wear and tear should not be very different.

The advantage of avoiding the Kings in the first round is a real one, but ultimately the Sharks will have to be the better team if they want to advance to the finals. Maybe ramping up to the playoffs with a rigorous stretch against top opponents will do the trick.

Pavelski’s 3rd Hat Trick Propels Sharks to 5-2 Win

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By Mary Walsh

Joe Pavelski has found the trick to three-goal games. Tuesday in Edmonton, he scored his third hat trick, after starting the season without even one hat trick in his NHL career. His three goals boosted the San Jose Sharks to a 5-2 win over the Edmonton Oilers.

Patrick Marleau scored the first Sharks goal of the game, and Martin Havlat scored the game winner in the second period. The Sharks scored three  goals on the power play (two were Pavelski’s). Edmonton goals came from David Perron and Taylor Hall. Antti Niemi made 28 saves for the win, Ben Scrivens made 29 saves for the Oilers.

It took the Sharks a full period to find their legs in the second part of back to back games in Alberta. The Oilers, rested after an embarrassing loss to Calgary, came out fast against the Sharks. They opened the scoring when David Perron brought the puck in while his teammates drove the Sharks’ defense back. Perron skated around Tyler Kennedy and shot around Brad Stuart to score at 4:11 of the first period. Assists went to Taylor Hall and Jeff Petry.

The Sharks’ fourth line responded well to that goal, gaining the zone and earning an excellent scoring chance, but Mike Brown lost the puck on a wrap-around try. In the same shift, a shot from Sharks’ defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic caught the Oilers’ Ryan Jones in the knee and sent him limping off the ice.

The rest of the first was marked by some good luck for the Sharks that defended them against several attacks from the Oilers. The period ended with the shots 11-10 Sharks.

The second period began with the Sharks outshooting the Oilers 6-1 in the first five minutes. The first penalty of the game was called against the Oilers when Ryan Smyth went to the box for holding. It only took the Sharks 37 seconds on the power play to tie the game. Oilers goaltender Ben Scrivens stopped a shot from Patrick Marleau but Joe Pavelski was in position to pick up the rebound and put it in to an open net. The assists went to Marleau and Joe Thornton.

A few minutes later, a good chance for the Sharks’ third line drew another penalty against the Oilers. Andrew Ference went off for holding James Sheppard. It took the Sharks considerably longer to score on this second power play, but the Sharks’ top power play unit of Thornton, Marleau, Burns, Pavelski and Boyle held the zone and fired a flurry of shots without losing possession. Finally a shot from Marleau went in, with assists going to Pavelski and Burns.

The Sharks took their first penalty at 11:43 of the second period, when Brad Stuart went to the box for hooking. The Sharks killed it off but shortly thereafter, Adam Burish blocked a shot and left the ice with what looked like a serious hand injury.

The Sharks had a few close calls later in the period, but with just 39 seconds left, the third line caught a break and Martin Havlat skated into the Oilers’ zone with Tommy Wingels two on one. Despite taking a slash to his stick, Havlat put a hard shot past Scrivens to give the Sharks a two goal lead.

Through the period, the Sharks had 17 shots to the Oilers’ 7.

Matt Nieto drew a penalty from Taylor Hall to start the third period. The second power play unit did not get a chance to play, as Pavelski scored just 46 seconds in, bouncing a shot off the inside of Scrivens’ skate. Assists went to Dan Boyle and Brent Burns.

Several minutes later, Pavelski made it 5-1 for the hat trick after the Sharks kept the Oilers trapped in their zone for too long. Assists went to Joe Thornton and Brad Stuart.

The Oilers got one back with just over five minutes left in the game. Some hard work on the boards sent the puck in front of Niemi, where a diving Taylor Hall was able to scoop in into the net. A hooking call against Matt Nieto gave the Oilers a second chance on the power play with less than a minute left in the third period, but they could not change the score from 5-2.

Tommy Wingels got credit for 12 hits, leading all skaters in the game in that statistic. Brent Burns and Joe Pavelski each had four shots. David Perron lead the Oilers in shots with six.

The three stars of the game were Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau and Taylor Hall.

The Sharks next play in San Jose on Thursday at 7:30 pm. They will host the Winnipeg Jets.