Then, reality strikes. The Sharks are bundled out in some dramatic or ridiculous fashion, and you look at the team and wonder why. I mean, a unit stacked with guys like Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau and Dan Boyle is better than a first round exit. Yet, it happens again and again. The Sharks are chronic playoff chokers. It must be so frustrating to be a fan, teased throughout the regular season, set up for something big, something memorable, and then, bang, it all falls apart.
Forever more, the 2013-15 San Jose (second best in the Western Conference after the regular season) team will be cemented amongst the NHL’s most famous – read, infamous – playoff disappointments, following the collapse to end all collapses, one that ended on Wednesday night in front of a home crowd who could barely understand what was playing out before their eyes. The same crowd who turned up for Game Five, expecting that the Sharks would out the Los Angeles Kings, and cruise into the semi-final round, their pursuit of a Stanley Cup well and truly on track.
Fair enough, too, because San Jose had decimated and dominated a lacklustre Kings outfit in three straight games, putting more pucks past LA’s goalie, Jonathan Quick, than seemed humanly possible. Yeah, the Kings won Game Four on home ice, but that win appeared to be more of a staving off of the inevitable, a stay of execution, than the beginning of a dramatic turnaround.
Then came Game Five and Game Six, and, hang on a second, the Kings won them both decisively, looking like San Jose had in the first three games. Suddenly, it was tied series, with a winner-takes-all Game 7, and even though things had deteriorated of late, the Sharks, who dropped starting goalie Antti Niemi in favour of playoff rookie Alex Stalock, before bringing Niemi, a Stanley Cup winner with Chicago in 2010, back for Game 7, still had a chance to advance.
A win in the deciding game of the series would have healed so many wounds. A Game 7 win would have seen all the negative press heaped on them in the aftermath of the previous three games would go up in smoke. The playoff chokers, in the midst, perhaps, of choking once more, had a chance to prove the doubters – of whim there were many – wrong.
Except someone forgot to tell the Sharks that. A narrow 2-1 Los Angeles lead heading into the third period, became a 5-1 Kings victory, with Tyler Toffoli, Dustin Brown and Tanner Pearson adding tallies, and suddenly the road team joined the 1942 Maple Leafs, 1975 Islanders and 2010 Flyers in history, as the only clubs able to come back from a 0-3 series deficit.
Enough is enough in San Jose. You figure that something needs to change because the status quo isn’t working. The Sharks are a team more than capable of winning a Stanley Cup. You can argue that they should’ve won maybe two of them in the past few years, but there’s always been a choke somewhere along the line to derail their hopes.
If this was an aberration, like Boston’s capitulation to Philly four years ago, you could argue against making any changes to the coaching staff and hockey operations group and put it down to a large helping of plain bad luck, but playoff disappointment is less the exception than the rule in San Jose.
Head Coach Todd McClellan might find his head on the chopping block because his roster was built to win Cups, and he hasn’t been able to achieve it. How much of a loss like this is the coach’s fault is, admittedly, debateable, but McClellan is the figurehead, and if the fan base is clamouring for some sort of change after this latest playoff failure, obviously it’s easier to remove the coach (and possibly the General Manager) than players on long-term contractors. Certainly, it’s the favoured move in the NHL.
Ultimately, I think something needs to happen. The Sharks need to regain the trust of their fans, after promising so much but delivering so little when it counts. There is a recognised finite window of opportunity for rosters – the narrow space between when a young team matures enough and when they become too mature – to win a Stanley Cup in this salary cap-driven parity era of professional hockey. San Jose’s problem is that their window is closing.
There exists the possibility that the Sharks will miss out, similar to how Vancouver had their chances, particularly in 2011, and missed it. The Canucks haven’t really recovered and are behind the eight ball in the strong Western Conference, which doesn’t look like getting any less competitive anytime soon. Remember, guys like Pavelski, Thornton and Marleau aren’t getting any younger.
Owners and hockey management in San Jose have some tough decisions to make. I would imagine they’ll wait for some of the hysteria to die down, and look at the situation more objectively, but if nothing changes during this offseason and the Sharks suffer more disappointment early in the playoffs next year – or, worse, don’t even make it to the post-season – they risk alienating a large portion of their fan base, which, in a non-traditional hockey market like California, is a risk that might have long-lasting ramifications for the franchise.
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