First and foremost, a belated congratulations to our Olympians - Marleau, Thornton, Heatley, and Boyle for their golds, and Pavelski for his silver. The US-Canada final was an extremely good game, and I won’t lie - I was jumping up and down and going nuts (along with a bunch of friends) when Parise scored the tying goal. Good work, boys.

But now, back to your regularly scheduled NHL season, and I have to admit that I haven’t been particularly impressed with the way the Sharks have come out of the break. After a dismal first two periods against New Jersey, the Sharks have given an uneven effort (at best) against two non-playoff teams. Granted, they managed to pull out the come-from-behind victories against both of those teams, but it’s still a small cause for concern when Montreal and Columbus are giving your supposedly elite team trouble, especially back to back. It can’t be discounted that the Sharks are currently missing Marc-Edouard Vlasic, a key player on their defense, but the dropoff between Vlasic and his revolving door of replacements shouldn’t be enough to sway the dynamics of a game to this degree.

I must also say that I wasn’t particularly impressed with Joe Thornton’s play even pre-Olympic break, was not particularly impressed with him during the Olympics either, and am now still on the fence about his play. Though he’s on pace to eclipse his disappointing season from last year (which says something about how good Thornton is, when 86 points is a disappointment), it seems to me that he’s turning the puck over a lot more these days, which I think is due at least in part to Thornton not shooting as much as he used to. I think having Heatley and Marleau on his wings has had a net negative effect on Joe - though he’s getting more points now that Heater is here, I feel like he’s also pigeonholing himself even further as a passer as a result. To be fair, his SOG pace is higher than it was last year (where he took just 139 in a full 82 games - ridiculous), but if you look at his best full season as a Shark, the 22-92 campaign in 06-07, he took 218 shots that year. The year before, in 58 games with San Jose, he had 135 shots - just four less than his entire total from last year. And you have to remember that those years, Jonathan Cheechoo scored a combined 93 goals (56 + 37), so it’s not like his linemates were goal scoring slouches back then either (well…Nils Ekman was kind of a slouch, but even he potted 21 that year). Thornton seems to do better when his shot totals increase, and this year his shooting percentage is not too far off of Marleau or Heatley’s marks. Conclusion? He needs to shoot more. This should no longer be about Thornton just “playing his game” and the coaching staff deferring to him because he puts up 90 points a year. A coaching staff’s job is to get the most out of its players, and if Thornton needs to shoot more to maximize his effectiveness then they have to get him to do it. I realize and fully accept that he will never be as much of a shooter as Heatley or even Marleau, but is two shots on goal per game (164 for the year) really too much to ask, especially when faced with the fact that his best full season as a Shark came with him firing over 2.8 per game?

I called out Torrey Mitchell in a post a few months back, citing my displeasure with his level of play. Post-Olympic break, I must admit that he’s been quite good so far. For example, in the Montreal game, he was all over the ice - his play to set up Nichol’s one-timer that hit the post was a beautiful hustle play, and his setup of Malhotra for the game winner was part speed (rush down the boards), part hustle (puck retrieval), and part awareness/vision (the perfect pass to an open Malhotra in the slot). He’s had a disappointing season and I still think that if Couture is ready next year he’s going to be the one on the block, but his play has been much more on the level of what I expected out of him as of late, which is good.

Finally, in the wake of the trade deadline, I think it’s about time I commented briefly on the Wallin trade. Looking at the deals for defensemen at the deadline, paying a second rounder and a fifth rounder for him seems a little steep, but not too bad. Granted, it seems that the Sharks could have gotten (and I would have preferred) Jordan Leopold for the same price, but other than that it seems like the price for defensemen was otherwise quite high this year. Derek Morris is another guy that the Sharks might have looked into; his price ended up being a 4th round pick, although his $3.3 million contract was admittedly probably an issue there. But on the flip side of things, Leopold’s teammate Dennis Seidenberg returned to Florida two prospects AND a 2nd round pick (to be fair, the Panthers did have to include another prospect), and even Aaron Ward (a third pairing guy at best) cost Anaheim a 4th round pick. Joe Corvo, the object of some Sharks fans’ desires, went to Washington for a pretty good roster player (Pothier), a prospect, AND a 2nd round pick, which is entirely too much in my opinion. In this context, it looks to me that Doug Wilson maybe overpaid slightly, but that in the grand scheme of things he didn’t do so badly. I disagree that Wallin was what the Sharks needed - he’s basically Huskins but a little better at most things, which is awkward because Huskins isn’t going anywhere and that makes the Sharks’ third pairing embarrassingly unmobile - but he’s been pretty unnoticeable since he’s gotten here, and that’s probably the best praise you can give a defensive defenseman, so maybe Dougie made the right call after all. The price paid for Corvo sours me on that possibility (an equivalent from the Sharks’ organization might be Demers + mid-tier prospect + 2nd), as does the price on Seidenberg, and most of the other guys that moved at the deadline had some kind of issue that would have precluded the Sharks from considering him, usually salary. So in the grand scheme, while I really would have preferred Jordan Leopold or someone in that same mold with some offensive upside, Niclas Wallin is a pretty decent pickup for the stretch run.

Congratulations are also due to Patrick Marleau for setting a new career high in goals with 17 games to go. The Sharks should have six 20-goal scorers again this year - two are already there (Heatley and Marleau), and four more are within striking distance (Pavelski with 18, Thornton and Setoguchi with 16 apiece, and Clowe with 15). The Sharks are going to need that firepower come playoff time.

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on March 8th, 2010 by wraith985
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I thought I’d take a moment to give my thoughts on what the Sharks could potentially do at the deadline to acquire a defenseman. Follow my chain of logic here -

1. The Sharks should be looking to add to their defense, not “upgrade” Vlasic - The “logic” of packaging Vlasic for a nominally-better defenseman boggles my mind. All year, we hear about how awful Huskins is, or how Demers has been up and down, or how Murray isn’t playing enough minutes to be considered a legitimate #4. Sending Vlasic packing doesn’t address any of those concerns. A popular proposal seems to be to package Vlasic to Minnesota in exchange for Brent Burns. Assuming without deciding that Burns is indeed an upgrade to Vlasic, how does that solve ANY of the problems on defense? Huskins is still the same player, Demers is still the same player, Murray will still be playing the same amount of minutes, and so forth. And when the playoffs roll around, even with Burns in the top four, two of Huskins, Demers, and Leach are STILL going to be playing on a nightly basis, which seems to be the thing people are *actually* complaining about. Shipping Vlasic out does nothing to help the Sharks unless he brings both a top-4 AND a third-pairing defenseman in return, and that’s really just not going to happen at his $3.1 million price point. The idea should be to upgrade Huskins or Leach (I doubt Demers will see playoff action) in order to improve the strength of the third pairing, not to “trade in” Vlasic for a slightly better version of himself, losing picks and/or prospects in the process.
2. The Sharks have limited cap space, meaning that any trade must include a roster player - Granted, the Sharks (if they keep their current roster or something close to it, which doesn’t seem like an unreasonable assumption) can fit an additional $1.6 million or so under the cap at the deadline according to CapGeek. Nevertheless, that $1.6 million isn’t going to get you the player that you want; the Sharks’ top-end prospect cupboard is a little thin at the moment, and most of the defensemen that would be upgrades to Huskins or Leach make more than that anyway. In order for the Sharks to fit more, a roster player is going to have to go. Be realistic - nobody wants Huskins.
3. The Sharks must still carry 12 forwards and 6 defensemen - This is a commonly overlooked point. Let’s take a hypothetical Clowe + Mitchell for Souray deal - the thinking is that $3.6M + $1.3M = $4.9M and that’s close enough to $5.4M such that Wilson can make it work. Wrong. Trading two forwards for one defenseman would leave the Sharks with 11 forwards and 8 defensemen on their roster. They’ll have to adjust that to have enough forwards to fill four lines, and that means a defensive demotion and a forward promotion. Demers ($543,333) is the logical candidate to go, but the logical choice to come up, Jamie McGinn, makes $997,000. Whoops. You have to remember to factor in not only salary, but roster realities. Because of the difference in Demers’ and McGinn’s salaries, you have to “tack on” $454K to Souray’s cap hit to compensate. A two forwards for Souray deal needs to clear more like $5.85M.
4. The Sharks must consider the coming off-season - Four key players (Marleau, Setoguchi, Pavelski, Nabokov) are due new contracts. Any deal must take into consideration not only this year’s salary cap situation, but next year’s as well.

With all of that in mind, let’s examine the Sheldon Souray proposals going around:

First, we can rule out a one-for-one trade. The only members of the Sharks that make the same ballpark figure as Souray are Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton, Dan Boyle, Patrick Marleau, and Evgeni Nabokov. Even disregarding the fact that four of the five of those guys have NTCs, would you really move any of them anyway? Yeah, I thought not.

The next people down the salary chart are Clowe, Blake, Vlasic, and Murray. As mentioned above, it makes no sense to ship out one top-four defenseman to get a slightly better one, so you can pretty much immediately rule out the three defensemen (it’s actually important that Blake not be traded, so that the cap situation can work itself out - more on the cap in a bit). MAYBE Vlasic goes if Vlasic + Clowe can return two defensemen, but Visnovsky and Gilbert both make too much, Smid is still unproven and isn’t necessarily an upgrade to the third pairing, and Grebeshkov isn’t going anywhere, so I’m pretty sure that won’t happen (maybe Staios?). That leaves Clowe’s $3.625 million contract as a potential bargaining chip, so let’s look at that.

Let’s assume for a moment that Clowe is indeed on the block, a sketchy proposition in my mind given that management is clearly enamored of him, he was JUST signed to a big contract, and they will likely want him around in case they lose one or more top-six forwards this off-season. Further assume that the Sharks will use up every last cent of their available cap space - a pro-rated $1.6 million or so. We’re left with $5.225 million in equity - close, but not quite enough to match Souray’s $5.4 million.

With the caveat clearly in mind that the Sharks should not trade Demers (since he’ll likely be taking Blake’s spot next year) and that Edmonton won’t want San Jose’s trash (Huskins), that leaves forwards. This brings into play the whole roster balancing issue. Assume that it’s McGinn coming up, and tack on the difference to how much cap space would need to be cleared for Souray. That puts Souray in the neighborhood of $5.85 million outgoing, so an additional $600K would need to be cleared. Nichol and Malhotra clearly aren’t going anywhere, and I doubt Edmonton wants Shelley. That leaves Torrey Mitchell as the other logical bargaining chip.

Would Clowe + Mitchell for Souray be beneficial? I’m not sure. I’m not actually all that broken up about Mitchell - with Thornton and Pavelski presumably being the Sharks’ pivot duo for the foreseeable future, Couture chomping at the bit for a top six spot as well, and potentially Nichol and Malhotra also in the mix, the Sharks have a pretty good thing going for them at center. And to be fair, I haven’t been super impressed with Clowe’s play - I certainly don’t think he should be an untouchable. From a player value standpoint, I think that deal would actually probably be fine.

I think what really breaks it for me, though, is the massive amount of salary Souray would add to next year’s cap figure. The Sharks currently have just nine players signed through next year, but are already committed to a whopping $34.2 million in salary for those players. Assuming the cap doesn’t go anywhere, that’s $22.6 million to grab 11 players - and when you consider that Marleau will take 6.5, Pavelski and Seto at least 3-3.5 each, and Nabokov at least 3.5, you’re left with almost nothing. Assuming those four players take a combined $18 million to lock up, the Sharks would need to sign 7 more players with $4.6 million in cap room. Forget Souray’s $5.4 million deal, the Sharks can barely afford more than league minimum to fill out their roster once the key FAs are in the fold. And let’s not forget that Clowe and Mitchell are two of those nine players, so you need to find money for an additional slot just to make the roster work at all. The numbers may work out for this year, but the Sharks simply will not be able to afford his salary next year unless they resign themselves to losing one of their free agents. If Wilson is fine with that, then it’s certainly possible that he pulls the trigger. My instinct is that he won’t be fine with that, especially since the two big UFAs have played their entire careers in Sharks teal and the two big RFAs are key homegrown components.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents on the whole Souray situation. Feel free to chime in if you disagree!

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on January 28th, 2010 by wraith985
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As I was going through a couple of nights of back highlights earlier (it’s been a weird weekend, but I always try and get my hockey fix…at least eventually), specifically tonight’s Nashville/Toronto tilt, I was struck by an epiphany.

Manny Malhotra is what Marcel Goc was supposed to be. And it’s a lot more obvious than it might appear.

(Yes, it seems that I am still the president of the Marcel Goc fan club).

Both players are well-sized (Malhotra with a slight edge at 6′1 215, with Goc at 6′0 200) left-handed shots who have pretty good speed, are excellent in the faceoff dot, and are defensively-responsible natural centermen with offensive potential. While this may sound like a weird way to characterize Goc (whose point totals the past three years have been 13, 8, and 11), it’s clearly the case - Marcel has 10 goals and 9 assists in Nashville this year, vindicating my belief all along that he just needed the opportunity to play with players who could actually score for a change. Let’s be honest, J.P. Dumont and Cody Franson are worlds better than Tomas Plihal and Jody Shelley on the offensive end of the ice, and it’s clearly showing.

Marcel’s confidence is back in spades, and he potted his tenth goal tonight to go along with nine assists for the campaign. That leaves him just three points shy of his career high of 22, which came mostly in the first three months of the 2005-06 season before the Joe Thornton trade left him languishing with the offensively-challenged in the bottom six (Remember Grant Stevenson? Yeah, it was THAT year). I posted about this at some point last year, observing that he was actually on pace for 22 goals when he was centering the second line before his world got twist-turned upside down. Somewhere along the way, it seems that Ron Wilson ruined any confidence he may ever have had, and last year I lamented the fact that he wasn’t getting rewarded for his very good all-around play because he was skating with Plihal and Shelley almost exclusively. He finished with just 2 goals and 9 assists, another disappointing offensive year from the former first-round draft pick.

For comparison’s sake, Manny Malhotra has 8 goals and 10 assists on the year - the one point difference easily explained away by the games Malhotra missed with injury. Malhotra was also a first-round draft pick that didn’t quite pan out as expected, and yet has carved out a niche in the NHL in his own right. He’s been steady all year despite a revolving door of linemates and has found solid chemistry not only with Nichol and Ortmeyer but also with Pavelski and Setoguchi on the second line. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any Sharks fan who would characterize the Malhotra signing as anything other than a big win.

Which leads me to my conclusion. I believe that if you plugged this year’s Marcel Goc into this year’s Sharks lineup, you’d get almost an exact mirror image of what Malhotra brings to the table. Manny Malhotra is doing everything that Goc was supposed to do - kill penalties, be defensively responsible, chip in the odd goal or assist, and generally just be reliable. Goc has definitely done all of that in Nashville. In short, Malhotra is what Goc was supposed to be, and from the looks of it, Nashville is getting that Marcel Goc (and not the Goc we knew and tolerated) right when things are starting to click into place.

In my view, the talent was always there, but because of the center situation in San Jose things just never worked out for him here. I’m glad to see that he’s doing well, even though he no longer dons the teal. I think most Sharks fans are just fine with having Manny Malhotra in Goc’s place, but there’s always something to be said about home-grown talent making good with the big squad, and it’s a shame that Goc didn’t get to experience that with the club that showed so much faith in him with its 1st round draft pick.

And as for everyone who always made fun of me for holding steady to my view that Goc could be a very nice offensive contributor in the right situation, well - I hate to say I told you so, but…

(Fantastic 9-1 win against Calgary, and a pretty solid 4-2 win over Edmonton as well - secondary scoring is back, at least for now…)

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on January 19th, 2010 by wraith985
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The Sharks start the new year 3-2, with victories against St. Louis, LA, and Phoenix balanced out by severe beatings against LA (6-1) and Detroit (4-1). That leaves the Sharks 30-10-7 on the season, good for the top spot in the NHL, with Chicago (1 point back with 1 game in hand) and New Jersey (2 points back, 3 games in hand) nipping at their heels. It’s been an interesting month and change - an 0-2-3 run, followed by an 8-0 run, and 3-2 since; that’s 11-4-3 in their last 18, which certainly isn’t bad but feels a lot worse than the numbers might indicate.

There are obviously problems with this team, and tops on my list is the complete disappearance of the second line. Setoguchi looks lost, and is pointless in his past seven; Pavelski doesn’t look lost, but joins Seto on the schneid with no points in his last six. Clowe has three helpers in his last seven, but is a miserable -6 in that time. Despite that, they are still right where we expected them to be on the overall scoring table - in 5th through 7th, behind the Marleau/Thornton/Heatley lines and Dan Boyle. Given their poor play as of late, that doesn’t bode well for Sharks scoring depth. Of note, Pavelski is 6th on the team in scoring with 21 points, despite having only played in 32 games.

Granted, I never expected guys like Mitchell, McGinn, and Malhotra to put up 40 points, but especially as of late it seems like nobody’s scoring except the big dogs. Devin Setoguchi is on pace to finish with less than 30 points, for crying out loud, and only Clowe is projected to finish the season above 50 points. In stark contrast to Captain Patrick, Seto is doing an extraordinary job of blowing his first contract year (Pavelski I can give a pass to because of his 15 game absence; 21 points in 32 games is a 53 point pace, which is about where realistic estimates would have placed him). There’s certainly the possibility of a second-half turnaround, and there’s way too much talent for this to last forever, but at least as of right now it doesn’t look so hot on the ice. In the meantime, I will console myself by telling me that they’re saving it for the second half playoff push. In their absence, the Sharks are a classic one-line team, and even the most dominant one-line team of the 90s (the Legion of Doom Flyers) couldn’t get to the promised land.

This does bring me to another point, though - namely, that as a Sharks fan I am immensely spoiled by the amount of talent that Doug Wilson has assembled. When I look at at Patrick Marleau’s year, sometimes I lament that he has only 18 assists…but he has 31 goals, for crying out loud! And then, I look at Heatley, and I’m disappointed because he “only” has 27 - like, he’s supposed to be the best goal scorer on the team, and he’s not even neck and neck with Patty? Of course, that doesn’t consider that his goal total thus far puts him behind just five players - Marleau, Crosby, Gaborik, and Ovechkin (he would also be behind Kovalchuk if he hadn’t been injured, but let’s face it - if OV and Kovy hadn’t been injured, they would be the leading goal scorers right now, not Marleau). That list is pretty much a who’s-who of elite NHL offensive players, and Heater’s right there. Derf. How bad can it REALLY be?

The Sharks currently have three of the top twelve point scorers in the NHL. That’s totally and completely insane. A lot of the time, I feel like we forget that despite their individual failings and foibles, that Patty/Joe/Dany have combined for a ridiculous 160 points this year, including 69 goals. I think people like Ryan Garner who think that we should have stayed pat are certifiably insane. Marco Sturm might hit 25 goals this year if he’s lucky, Cheechoo is unfortunately still looking a step too slow in Ottawa, Michalek has cooled considerably after a very hot start (reverting back to the Milan that we know and alternately love and hate), and Malhotra is Primeau but better. The only guy that the Sharks even remotely miss out of the packages of players they had to part with here is Brad Stuart, who would certainly be an upgrade on the blue line over Huskins, but he also makes more money. And besides, if you think the team would be better off with Sturm, Stuart, and Primeau, well, if you truly think Sturm-Marleau-Cheechoo is better than Marleau-Thornton-Heatley (none of Pavs, Clowe, or Seto were involved in trades, so we’d still have all of them), then give me some of whatever you’re taking to hallucinate to that degree. It’s just insane that anyone could even begin to advance the argument that the Thornton and Heatley deals weren’t both enormous wins for the Sharks, short and long term. The players acquired weren’t perfect, but they’re still worlds better than the players that were given up, and the real world is knocking and asking to be let in to your heads.

Anyway, back on topic, one more player I must single out - Torrey Mitchell. I fully expected him to build on his 20-point rookie year, but he’s regressed considerably and is fighting for ice time out there. I suppose it didn’t help that Malhotra, Ortmeyer, and Nichol found substantial chemistry as a third line, bumping Mitchell down to fourth line duties. I know it’s hard to get points with guys like Shelley and Staubitz on your wings, so I can’t put the blame solely on Mitchell, but I’d really like to see him get a few more points when he gets opportunities (see McGinn, who has 7 goals this year despite being on the Worcester shuttle and being another victim of the bottom six line shuffling). If this continues, I suppose we’ll just have to wait a little while longer for Mitchell to live up to his $1.3+ million contract.

In general, I’m not too high and not too low on the Sharks right now, and I get the feeling that a lot of people feel the same way. There are clearly still things to work on and some guys still need to get going, but the Sharks are still doing pretty well despite their flaws. It’s a good sign that the Sharks beat LA and Phoenix on back to back nights - those two teams have given the Sharks a lot of trouble over the years, and this year has been no exception, so it’s very good to see that they found a way to beat some trouble teams (especially on the heels of that 4-1 loss against Detroit). I’m still optimistic - if they can win while basically only getting goals from the big three, how good can they be when the second line kicks it into gear and starts potting them as well? It’s fun to think about; hopefully, it’ll come to fruition sometime in May.

Tomorrow, the Boston game - and since I just trashed Marco Sturm, he’s a natural and logical candidate to be a scorer tomorrow. C’est la vie.

-Jonathan Wnag

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by wraith985
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Season’s greetings, Chompboarders! I know I’ve been negligent in my blogging duties as of late - I blame the convergence of final exams and Christmas. But as always, I’ve been diligently watching our Sharks, so there are a few things I wanted to make note of before too long had passed:

First and foremost, congratulations to Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Dany Heatley, AND Dan Boyle for making Team Canada’s roster - that’s quite an assembly of talent the Sharks have there. Also congrats to Douglas Murray for making Sweden’s roster, Evgeni Nabokov for being named the starting goaltender for Team Russia, Thomas Greiss for making Team Germany, and (if Drew is right) Joe Pavelski for making Team USA. Fantastic news for all involved. I think this will be a good thing for the Sharks - it gives their top players a warmup for the playoff push, something that (IMO) outweighs the risk of one of the big guns getting hurt for the long haul. In any case, the Olympics are only once every four years, so I can’t begrudge these guys the honor of representing their country.

As for the Sharks proper - after we left off with an 0-2-3 record in five games, the Sharks have managed to win five straight - Anaheim, Dallas, Chicago, Anaheim again, and finally Phoenix two nights ago. Just as I cautioned against getting too down on the Sharks after their five-game string of futility, I must caution against thinking that the ship is righted once more with these five wins. The Sharks were admittedly impressive in both of their wins against Anaheim, and the Dallas game was pretty good as well, but the Chicago game was pretty bad (although not as bad as the shot totals might indicate, at least in my view) and the Phoenix game wasn’t great either. It’s rather disheartening to see the Sharks give up leads time and time again, as they did in the Phoenix game, and spend large amounts of time hemmed in their own zone to boot. It really just goes to show that W-L-T and SOG statistics don’t tell the whole story. All in all, the Sharks have reclaimed their spot atop the West (shared with Chicago, who have now caught up in games played), so it’s hard to complain too much - the normal ups and downs of the season will do that, I suppose. It’s hard to believe that anyone would refuse a 24-8-7 record through 39 games if offered that at the beginning of the year, so it’s not like anything should change now just because five of those losses happened to come in the last ten games.

Some thoughts on other Western teams - although the Avalanche currently sit atop their division with 50 points, their game log tells the story that I thought it would. After a torrid October, they’ve come down to earth a bit, though they’re still playing fine hockey (Paul Statsny is a stud!). LA is still right in the thick of things despite losing Ryan Smyth for a long stretch, and Quick has been solid in net, so that was borne out as well. What continues to flabbergast me to this day is how Phoenix and Nashville continue to put up wins - currently 4th and 5th in the conference, above early-season favorites like Calgary, Vancouver, and Detroit! It’s really a testament to Dave Tippett and Barry Trotz that such undertalented teams can nonetheless be locking down playoff spots in a very tough Western Conference. Of course, Nashville’s been a plucky team for years, but Phoenix has joined them largely on the back of Ilya Bryzgalov’s monstrous play in net. 20 games might be an aberration, but with 41 in the books for them and a 25-13-3 record to their credit, I’m ready to admit that I was wrong about Phoenix. Shane Doan leads the team with as many points as Patrick Marleau has goals, but that hasn’t stopped them from putting up the most important stat - wins.

Looking below the line, St. Louis stands out to me as a team that could make a second-half push. I have tremendous respect for Chris Mason as a goaltender, and all of the pieces are clearly there. What puts me over the top on the Blues is their amazing 11-4-3 record on the road; that kind of road success is no accident. Their dismal 6-13-2 record at home actually reminds me a lot of that one year where San Jose compiled the league’s best record on the road, but just couldn’t win at home consistently for the first 50 games or so. Watch out when St. Louis gets its home affairs in order - if they just played .500 hockey at home (meaning 10-10-1 instead of 6-13-2), their combined record would be 21-14-4 and they’d be nipping at Vancouver’s heels with a game in hand. You have to figure that sooner or later they’re going to figure out how to win at home (most teams, even bad ones, do), so they should rise in the standings.

Detroit is somehow 19-14-6 despite suffering a rash of injuries; look for them to make a push when Zetterberg gets back from his injury. Minnesota is starting to make a push after an awful start; look for them to climb the standings as well. Anaheim, Columbus, and Edmonton don’t look like they’re going to turn it around this year, and if they don’t it should make for some pretty interesting trade deadline rumors (especially with regard to Anaheim - Niedermayer, Selanne, and Giguere head the list of potential movers, and that’s a pretty big deal).

I’m a little pessimistic that the Sharks can beat the Caps tonight, especially after they came off of an embarrassing 6-3 loss to the lowly Carolina Hurricanes - they’ll be looking to rebound, big time. The Sharks have not been very organized in their own zone as of late, and were hemmed in their own zone for long stretches by an offensively-challenged teams in Phoenix just two nights ago, so I shudder to imagine what will happen with Ovechkin and Backstrom and Semin on the ice. Not all is right in Sharks-land, clearly. Still, I think the Sharks have the classic puncher’s chance - they have the edge in goal, and Washington’s defense actually isn’t all that much better, so if the big guys continue to produce and the bottom six continues to take care of their own end, we could end up with a barn burner. No matter what, it should be fun to watch.

That’s all for now. Happy holidays, everyone!

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on December 30th, 2009 by wraith985
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After an uninspiring 0-2-3 stretch, which includes regulation losses to Phoenix and Calgary along with shootout losses to Dallas and St. Louis (the lone OTL was to the Kings), I think it’s pretty safe to say that the sky is falling for these stumblin’, bumblin’ Sharks. Right?

After all, the Sharks never lost five games in a row last year, or in 06-07 (they had one in 07-08 though). After the Joe Thornton trade happened in 05-06, the Sharks didn’t lose five in a row again that year either (although the Thornton trade did come on the heels of a ten-game losing streak, as I’m sure we all remember).

That just about goes to show the kind of success that San Jose Sharks fans have been spoiled by these past few years. The Sharks had lost five in a row just once in their last 333 games, before you count these last five. There were a couple of 4-game losing skids sprinkled in there, along with some skids of losing 5 in 6 or 5 in 7, but those hardly count, right?

Honestly, people. Teams go into these kinds of skids all the time. Remember how that 07-08 team turned out? Yeah, they ended up second in the conference despite that world-ending 5-game losing streak.

It’s true that there hasn’t been a whole lot of offensive firepower lately. The Sharks looked pretty bad in Phoenix the other night, and aside from a 4-goal effort against LA, they haven’t been scoring many goals. The Marleau-Thornton-Heatley line has struggled a bit on the goal-scoring side of things, and the second line simply hasn’t been there to pick up the slack - least of all Devin Setoguchi, who’s been stone cold silent as of late. When you leave the goal scoring to guys like Manny Malhotra, your team isn’t going to win that many games. We all know this.

Still, looking at the games individually, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The Sharks showed character in coming back from a 4-2 deficit against the Kings, and even though they lost in overtime it was a point that they shouldn’t have gotten at all. The Calgary game was an excellent display by both sides, and the Sharks were edged out - that’s just the way it goes sometimes. No big deal. Dallas and St. Louis both just came down to the Sharks’ classic inability to win shootouts - Nabokov was stellar in both, but the Sharks just couldn’t get it past the opposing goaltender. The St. Louis game only went to a shootout at all because of monstrously awful play on the late power play, but those things happen; meanwhile, the Dallas game got tied up when Nabokov got tripped up by someone in front of the net (hard to say if it was the Shark or the Star), allowing Brad Richards an open shot at the 4×6. And, well, full negative marks to the Sharks for the Phoenix game - there’s no excuse for that one, 11-round shootout the previous night notwithstanding, although it should be noted that the Sharks played pretty well after Heatley’s goal woke them from their funk.

So really - what we have here is a stolen point, a “good” loss to Calgary, two fluky plays that ended up leading to shootouts, and one truly bad game which happened to be on the tail end of a back-to-back. But really - would it make a difference if we stuck a win in the middle of that, such that there were “only” a pair of two-game mini-skids in there? What if the Sharks were 1-3-1 in the stretch instead, for the same 3 points in 5 games? Because unlike the 5-game losing skid, that’s happened plenty of times over the past four years - the sole difference being that the Sharks would have won one of the shootouts and lost one of the other games in regulation time. Is that really better than 0-2-3? For me, the key number there is the middle one - regulation losses - and I take 0-2-3 over 1-3-1 pretty much always because frankly I don’t care about the Sharks’ ability to win in the shootout. Only one of regulation time and the shootout will be there in the playoffs, and I think we all know which one that is.

Teams don’t start 16-5-4 for no good reason, especially not through injuries to players like Setoguchi, Pavelski, and Blake (and let’s just lump Clowe in here too, since he might as well have been nonexistent during that time). If you call that overachieving, then you have to call this underachieving - implying that when the Sharks regress to their mean, they will be playing much better. In an 82-game schedule, especially one as compressed as this year’s, strings like this will occur - they do for every team. And as much as people like to scream “5-game losing streak” to anyone who will listen, overtime and shootout losses are qualitatively very different from a straight up regulation beating. Three points out of a possible ten is obviously not ideal, and is certainly a cause for concern, but it’s also definitely not enough to conclude that the Sharks are done and the sky has fallen. Marleau and Heatley will snap out of their funks (20 and 21 goals through 35 games is no fluke, recent struggles notwithstanding), Seto will get it going again, and the Sharks will be much better for having gone through this painful reminder that they have to fight if they want to be considered the cream of this particular crop.

The Sharks will have had four days off before their game Thursday against Anaheim - we’ll see if the rest has helped them get back on track.

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on December 15th, 2009 by wraith985
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According to TSN.ca, Boston Bruins center Marc Savard signed a 7-year deal extension worth $28.05 million, committing himself to Boston until he is 39 years old. Pierre LeBrun over at ESPN indicates that the deal is heavily front-loaded, structured so that Savard will make $7 million for the first two years, $6.5 million for the third, $5 million in the fourth, $1.5 million in the fifth, and $525,000 in each of the last two years of the deal.

As I’ve noted previously, Savard is an excellent touchstone for evaluating a potential Marleau deal because they are fairly similar players - both are All-Star forwards in the primes of their careers who would undoubtedly be highly sought-after as free agents. Marleau is 2 years younger, but Savard has been more productive (points-wise) in the past few years. On an aggregate level, it’s hard to argue that either player deserves to be paid significantly more than the other (although Marleau potted two more goals tonight, bringing him to 19 for the year and keeping him on pace to score 50 - yeesh!).

The structure of Savard’s deal shows me two things. One, Savard’s camp clearly understands the realities of the salary cap era. In structuring the deal the way they did, they left the Bruins the cap space necessary to keep a good team together around him, allowing them to remain a contender (at least in theory) for the duration of Savard’s contract. Two, Savard made the commitment to the Bruins, despite the fact that several teams would likely have lined up to offer him just the $7M-$6.5M-$6.5M-$5M portion of the contract ($25 million over 4 years), leaving on the table the possibility of negotiating one more contract at age 36. That tells me that he really truly wanted to stay in Boston, and was willing to sacrifice end-of-career income to stay there.

So what does that mean for Patrick Marleau? We know it’s very likely that he wants to stay here; his wife is from San Jose, he’s settled and has a family here, and uprooting all of that for some relatively-insignificant amount of extra dollars doesn’t seem like such a great move. He’s played 900 games in Sharks teal and from a sentimental standpoint, I’m sure he’d like to finish his career where it started (and many Sharks fans would as well). Even Thornton came on the telecast tonight and said that he hopes Marleau finishes his career in teal. However, with the Sharks in the cap situation they’re currently in, he has to know that the Sharks can’t offer him a short-term deal for the kind of money that he’s worth and still retain their other assets. If Marleau wants to play with Pavelski, Setoguchi, and Nabokov again next year, he’ll have to choose between short-term for less money or long-term and frontloaded.

Another wrinkle in the fabric comes from Doug Wilson’s stated disdain for the front-loaded contracts that essentially circumvent the cap (like Hossa’s). If Wilson refuses to bend his stance, Marleau is almost certainly gone because some team will come around and offer him upward of $6.5 million for a few years, something the Sharks probably can’t match if they want to keep everyone else.

If you consider a potential 6-year deal for Marleau structured similarly to Savard’s, though, we can factor in the 2 years that separate Savard and Marleau by using his current $6 million salary as a guide. A theoretical $7M-$7M-$6.5M-$6M-$6M-$5M deal would total up to be 37.5 million over 6 years, for a cap hit of $6.25 million, and those terms seem pretty fair. A deal like this both acknowledges and rewards Marleau’s current level of play while accounting for the inevitable decline in his skills. This also keeps his cap number fairly manageable, allowing the Sharks just a little bit more breathing room to sign other players. Tacking on an extra $3.5 million year as a seventh year would work out to $41 million over 7 years, pushing the cap hit under $6 million, and if he’s willing to take a little bit of a hometown discount on the trailing years, the cap hit could go down even further. And if Doug Wilson really goes off the deep end and sells out to keep Marleau a Shark for life, he could tack on the trailing $1.5M/$525K/$525K of Savard’s deal and push the cap hit down to about $4.3 million per season (but I don’t expect this to happen).

Either way, the fact that Savard signed a contract like the one he signed is positive news for Sharks fans - if Marleau, Pavelski, Setoguchi, and Nabokov all take up the example and sign deals designed to keep their cap hits manageable (frontloaded for Marleau and Nabby, backloaded for Pavs and Seto) so that the team can stay competitive, the Sharks could indeed keep most of their talent and still have a little bit of wiggle room under the cap - something that seemed impossible to fathom just a few months ago.

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on December 2nd, 2009 by wraith985
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Let’s just cut to the chase here - I know it’s early, but the Sharks probably don’t want to go into the playoffs without at least one more piece on the blue line, and they don’t have a whole lot of assets to move in order to get that piece. After their draft picks (SJ 1st, BUF 2nd, SJ 3rd, OTT 5th), the Sharks are left with just extraneous UFA contracts (Shelley), NHL-ready players with upside (Mitchell, McGinn, Couture), and ‘tweeners’ who haven’t demonstrated that they’re NHL ready just yet (Zalewski, Ferreiro). At their current rate, CapGeek projects that the Sharks can only take on a $500K salary at the deadline (full-season hit, of course). That pretty much means that a roster player must go (either to another team or to the AHL) to make space for the new acquisition - the Sharks don’t have enough cap space to add a piece without subtracting one from the roster. The biggest contract I can see being moved is Shelley’s expiring $725,000 (Clowe isn’t going anywhere and you’re delusional if you think anyone will take Huskins’ contract), meaning that the Sharks would be able to take on someone with a $1.2M cap hit or so. I went to CapGeek and pulled up the list of UFAs with $1.2M cap hit or under, and the pickings are extremely slim (basically, Zbynek Michalek and a list of journeymen that would not be upgrades over Huskins in the 5 slot). If we expanded the search up to $2.5M or below (though who knows how they’ll clear that much space), the list gets much more interesting. After eliminating the guys on teams that are Cup contenders, there are still some highlights:

• Aaron Ward, CAR (36) - $2.5M
• Anton Volchenkov, OTT (27) - $2.5M
• Adrian Aucoin, PHO (36) - $2.25M
• Dennis Seidenberg, FLA (28) - $2.25M
• Dan Hamhuis, NSH (26) - $2M
• Jordan Leopold, FLA (29) - $1.75M
• Niclas Wallin, CAR (34) - $1.75M
• Paul Mara, MTL (30) - $1.675M
• Nick Boynton, ANA (30) - $1.5M
• Lukas Krajicek, TBL (26) - $1.475M
• Garnet Exelby, TOR (28) - $1.392M

I’m not sure how many of these guys are actually upgrades over Huskins; I see a lot of grass-is-greener syndrome all the time when players are being evaluated. I doubt Volchenkov or Hamhuis are going anywhere, and I’m not sure Ward, Mara, or Krajicek are upgrades on Huskins. I suppose I wouldn’t mind Exelby except that he’s basically Douglas Murray, and I don’t think the blue line needs another slow defenseman to play alongside Huskins. I’ve always liked Jordan Leopold, and if he can be had from Florida (assuming they’re not pushing for a playoff spot of their own, which would mean that both he and Seidenberg would be off the table) with the money somehow working out, I think that would be ideal - he’s pretty mobile and not a bad point man on the 2nd power play if called upon.

RFAs are another story; there are some big names here, but it’ll take a lot to pry those big names away from their current teams and the Sharks aren’t in a position to give very much (and almost certainly won’t be able to re-sign those players and keep their own marquee names without dumping more salary in the off-season). Still, there are some decent highlights:

• Dan Girardi, NYR (25) - $1.550M
• Nicklas Grossman, DAL (24) - $975,000
• Paul Ranger, TBL (25) - $933,333
• Ian White, TOR (25) - $850,000

I seriously doubt any of those guys are going anywhere, but you never know - for the right package (probably Logan Couture+), it could get done.

All in all, I wouldn’t get too excited for an imminent upgrade on the blue line, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Doug Wilson pulled something out of his hat once more.

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on December 1st, 2009 by wraith985
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Hello, my fine people, my chickadees, lend me your ears!

I apologize for my extended absence from the blogosphere, and for taking away from my millions of adoring readers the very words I type that complete them in all their beings. Really. My bad on that.

But fear not, for I have returned and am chock full of bad puns, tasteless jokes, and other delightful Mason-isms that are sure to…delight.

Now, onto hockey.

Before this offseason, I correctly predicted that Jonathan Cheechoo, Milan Michalek, and Christian Ehrhoff would be gone before the start of the 2009-2010 season. Don’t bother looking it up, I didn’t post it anywhere. I’m just an analytical genius, you have to take my word on it.

Seriously though, It was simple: all of them are young and worthwhile players who have value (well, except for Cheechoo, somewhat) and all of them were part of a Sharks core that failed miserably and predictably in several successive years. While most Sharks fans are over losing Michalek and Cheechoo thanks to the honeymoon with a certain German-born sniper with an evil eye, some are still irked over the loss of a different hunky German who used to patrol the blue line in San Jose.

I’m here to tell you that everything will be just fine.

Sharks Executive VP and General Manager Doug Wilson stated that there are young players coming up through the pipeline that are ready to make the jump. And boy, was he right.

At 20 years old, Jason Demers already shows as much poise with the puck as the German rearguard and even more confidence than Ehrhoff displayed in his first seasons with the Sharks. Ehrhoff didn’t start to hit his stride until his 4th season in San Jose, prior to which he was a total loose canon, turnover machine, and fabricator of many special, special moments on defense.

Demers displays about as much all-around ability as Ehrhoff, save for skating and the monster shot that Christian mercilessly unleashes on the poor fans behind the glass about 3 feet to the left of the opposition net. The one thing that Ehrhoff seriously lacks - intelligence - Demers has shown he has in several ways, not the least of which is actively and obviously soaking up what Dan Boyle and Rob Blake are doing on a daily basis.

Of course, Demers could turn out to be a total bust. However, if Ehrhoff can turn into a coveted 40-point defenseman, there is no reason to believe that Demers cannot surpass Ehrhoff’s accomplishments. As quickly as Demers has adapted to the Big Show, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him become quite the hot commodity within the next two seasons.

-Mason Razavi

Posted on November 24th, 2009 by TheSandman
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Don’t look now, but not only do the Sharks have the best record in the league to date, but they also have three of the top five point-getters in the NHL and the best one-two goal-scoring punch (Heatley+Marleau) in the league to boot. They still haven’t lost at home in regulation (7-0-2), their power play is the best in the NHL, their penalty kill is second only to Chicago’s, and they’ve done all of this without various players for significant stretches - Pavelski, Setoguchi, and Blake most notably (and Clowe, if you count his prolonged pointless streak to start the year). As usual, our beloved Sharks are on a regular season roll, Chicago and Nashville setbacks notwithstanding. Of course, further analysis takes a little bit of shine off of those numbers - Thornton, Heatley, and Marleau drop to 8th, 16th, and 21st in the league when you sort by points per game, and the Sharks’ home power play is fourth-worst in the league (firing at just 14.7%). Their .720 points percentage is still tops in the league, though, which is a nice thing to hang your hat on. Any way you slice it, the Sharks have been the NHL’s best team to this point in the season.

Anyway, I only post because something rather telling happened to me the other day when I was talking to one of my friends about Dany Heatley. I pointed out that of his 15 goals to that point, he had scored 3 in one game and 2 in the game immediately prior, leaving “just” 10 goals in the remaining 21 contests. I later realized that 10 goals in 21 contests extrapolates to 39 goals over the course of a full year…and, in turn, that made me realize exactly how spoiled I’ve been in terms of watching the Sharks post gaudy numbers year after year. This point was driven home when my friend pointed out to me that it would take the top guys on his favorite team (the Oilers) something like 50-60 games to put up 15 goals. That got me thinking about how good the Sharks’ offense really is with the addition of Heatley.

With another hat trick, Heatley now has 18 goals in 25 games, which puts him on pace for a whopping 59 goals. It’s hard to imagine that he’ll pot anything less than the 39 he got last year unless he gets injured for an extended period of time (knock on wood). Meanwhile, Patrick Marleau has 14 goals of his own, which is a 45 goal pace, and he is one of only 13 players in the league that have 9 even strength goals (and of those 13, only 3 others have a shorthanded goal as well - Corey Perry, Rick Nash, and Zach Parise). Even if you round down to more reasonable estimates of 45 and 35, respectively, that’s already much more than last year’s top duo (Marleau at 38 and Setoguchi at 31). And then, you toss in the fact that the Sharks still have Setoguchi, and you have an inkling of how scary this team can be offensively.

Defensively, the team hasn’t been bad. Jason Demers has been surprisingly good this year and his production has made forgetting about Christian Ehrhoff a little bit easier. Joslin has done a decent job of filling in for Blake recently, Huskins is clearly coming around (although his blown tire yesterday night was a little embarrassing), and the Boyle/Murray pair is steady as ever. I took Vlasic and Blake to task a while back about their abysmal +/-, and at least on Vlasic’s side it has improved substantially, from -6 to E (Blake got hurt before he could make too much progress on his -4 rating). The Sharks will probably still need a little bit of back end help, depending on how far along Huskins and Demers come between now and February, but thus far they’ve been more than serviceable (though the heavy minutes Boyle has been playing in Blake’s absence is cause for concern).

Speaking of Christian Ehrhoff, a quick aside - seriously, people, stop being stupid (or willfully ignorant) about this. It HAD TO HAPPEN. I don’t care what you think about how great of a player he is - the fact of the matter is that the Sharks had to do something and, more importantly, EVERYONE ELSE knew that they had to do something. Everyone knew the Sharks were gunning for Heatley and needed the cap space to make it happen. More importantly, everyone knew that even if they DIDN’T land Heatley, they STILL would have had to clear over $4 million in cap space just to put a team on the ice - that’s extremely important. That meant that multiple parts would have to be moved to get the Sharks under the cap, regardless of whether the Sharks ended up dealing for Heater. The Sharks took clear advantage of a similar situation in Ottawa, getting Heatley for pennies on the dollar - so I don’t understand what’s so difficult to process about Vancouver getting the flip side of that deal, the “bad” deal for the Sharks that was necessary for the good deal to happen. Dany Heatley’s value was so far depressed that he was basically traded straight up for Michalek (the reality is that Cheechoo was negative value, and the 2nd rounder/5th rounder swap was the price the Sharks needed to pay to get Ottawa to take him for the deal to be salary-neutral). In exchange for getting such a ridiculous deal on Heatley, they needed to clear more space, and everyone knew that, meaning that every player on the Sharks had significantly depressed value on the trade market.

I’m not convinced Ehrhoff could have gotten a 1st round pick from anyone to begin with, let alone a high 1st rounder (for example, Pavel Kubina only got Garnet Exelby back…whoopty doo), but he certainly wasn’t going to get one with 28 other GMs well aware of the fact that Wilson couldn’t play hardball or even semi-hardball. Considering all of that, a 2nd round pick (White) is a pretty decent return for clearing $3.1 million in cap space, with Lukowich being the unfortunate salary dump. Doug Wilson essentially paid Vancouver the difference between a 1st and 2nd rounder (Ehrhoff minus White) AT MOST, in order to clear that space, so that he could actually put a team on the ice. So honestly - if you’re still complaining about the Ehrhoff deal, you’d better not be cheering for any of Heatley’s goals or any goals that Heatley assists on, because doing so makes you a gigantic hypocrite. If you would have done Ehrhoff + Michalek for Cheechoo, then you should have no problem with any of this, because that’s essentially exactly what happened in the end.

Finally, people thought I was all kinds of crazy when I said that this year’s 3rd/4th lines were leagues better than last year’s. Hate to say I told you so, but can anyone really dispute that now that 25 games are in the books? I am on record as a gigantic Marcel Goc defender, and I loved JR and Grier as much as anyone, but seriously - I don’t get how people couldn’t see that the guys we got to replace them were huge upgrades in the aggregate. When Mitchell gets back (or perhaps, IF he ever gets back), they’ll get even better. What a thought!

Sharks get three days off before a date with Chicago on Wednesday; after this, a bunch of their games are at home, so it should be the perfect opportunity for the Sharks to stay rested while extending their NHL-leading point total. Watch out for Hossa’s return on Wednesday; he’s on track to return and his addition to an already-deep Chicago lineup should provide them a huge boost. That game should be a barn-burner for sure.

-Jonathan Wang

Posted on November 22nd, 2009 by wraith985
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