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The Cry of the Fishmonger: The San Jose Sharks Season in Review
Yep, it's another new feature. Sports even.
It's near the end of March Madness, which means casual sports fans across the North America, and in the Bay Area in particular, start caring about the National Hockey League. Well, maybe "caring" is too strong a word. Noticing? Glancing at the hockey scores and standings when they're done with the stories about minor NFL signings, and baseball spring training notes and box scores? Remembering that the NHL exists?
The Stanley Cup playoffs are right around the corner, and they're what most of the non-die hard hockey fans really care about. The NHL regular season is mostly ignored by the sports-viewing public, a situation made worse by the fact that the NHL is no longer on ESPN (or rather, ESPN2 when they didn't have more important things to broadcast, like meaty, red-faced dudes named Magnus pushing Peugeot’s around a beach somewhere), but rather the Food Network.
Here's a quick recap of the Sharks season so far (broken into 20 game segments, and ignoring the stupid OTL/SOL column):
First half: 27-14, Awesome
Second half so far: 19-20, Very mediocre, but back on track lately
The highlights of the season so far:
-Joe Thornton, the best player to ever wear a Sharks jersey (with genuine apologies to Igor Larionov fans), is still a stud, and having another 100+ point campaign.
-Patrick Marleau continues to be stud 1-a.
-Mike Grier has been a great pickup, with the kind of strong 2-way play that Sharks fans haven't seen since Mike Ricci (and his bacon-rubbed hair) was working his Neanderthal-hockey magic, and getting nominated for Selke trophies.
By Ian, contributing
The midlights:
-The very young defense has been playing with a lot of poise. Matt Carle, Marc-Edouard "Pickles" Vlasic, and Christian Ehrhoff have delivered some decent offense along with mostly strong (and occasionally horrific) defense. Scott Hannan has been his usual steady self on D; he's the kind of player that doesn't get a lot of glory, but deserves it.
-The goaltending tandem of Evgeni Nabokov and Vesa Toskala has been (mostly) strong all year.
-The trade deadline pickups of veterans Bill Guerin (good move) and Craig Rivet (great move) should help this young Sharks squad in the playoffs.
-Milan Michalek is having a break-out year, setting career highs in goals and points, and he's only 22.
The lowlights:
-Jonathan Cheechoo's drop-off in goal scoring. WE love us some Cheech, and his stats are not bad at all (31 goals, 31 assists, +6), but this year the man from Moose Factory, Ontario just doesn't have the fire that landed him the Rocket Richard trophy last year for leading the league in goal scoring. The Cheechoo Train has been more of, say, a J Church for long stretches this year.
-Mark Bell. Bell escaped the Chicago Blackhawk's (one mess of a franchise, boy howdy) to a great team in San Jose, and a plum line assignment with the reigning league MVP (Thornton) and the goal scoring champion (Cheechoo). He promptly got a hit-and-run DUI right before training camp and then followed that up with the worst full-season of his career. Way to make an impression, Mark!
-The Sharks record against the Anaheim Ducks has been terrible. The Ducks have played outstanding hockey almost all year, and as difficult as it is to type that sinister clause, it's even worse to watch the Sharks play against the Ducks. The salt on the wound is the Norris-caliber season of the Ducks' Chris Pronger (possibly the most hated opposing player ever to play at the Shark Tank), who whined his way into a trade from Edmonton to Anaheim over the off-season.
-The Sharks' tendency to have long stretches of incoherent play. On paper the Sharks are as talented as any team in the league, and their record suggests that they should be considered Stanley Cup contenders. This Sharks fan is a little skeptical, though. The Sharks don't seem to be playing very well as a team, and often win due to outstanding individual efforts by Thornton, or Marleau, or Nabokov/Toskala. What's worse is that their team play appears to be worse now than it did in October or November, when it should be improving in preparation for the playoffs. Their play has improved lately, so maybe it was just a mid-winter funk that stuck around, but the Western conference is stacked with good-to-excellent teams, and the Sharks can't just rely on talent to make it deep into the playoffs.