Watching Vlasic play scared and get manhandled was frustrating. And, Ehrhoff was painfully erratic. Blake is 38 years old or whatever, so it’s kind of folly to lean on him as your second best defenceman, and as we saw over the course of this year, his defensive instincts, while not that strong to begin with, really suffered. Lukowich was pretty bad and while Murray had a physical presence, watching him hold the puck at the line or struggle to chip it out of the defensive zone was overly painful.

Chicago’s defence is physical, fast, and mobile. We saw what a huge difference Boyle made on the blueline this year — the first time SJ had a legitimate No. 1/presence back there. But it’s just Boyle on an island — especially when Vlasic shrinks in the post-season. I’m thinking if anything, Doug Wilson should be focusing on building the defence. I would rather have a $6M defenceman than a $6M forward. I’m talking about Marleau and Nabokov’s salary slots. Not to mention Blake’s $5M coming off the books.

I know scoring was a real problem, and the defensive statistics show that SJ is very adept on that side of the puck, but I’m wondering if that isn’t Ron Wilson residue where the forwards are playing further back and more defensive to help out the defence.

Maybe Bouwmeester is a pipe dream — when is the last big free agent signing for SJ? — but possibly targeting puck-movers like Kaberle, Jovo, or Souray — I know the latter two are making a lot of coin ($6.5M and $5.4M) but I think we could see a big difference in the team with some competent d-men that didn’t need to chip it out of the defensive zone and could either skate with the puck or shoot it.

I mean, let’s play a game of “What If?” What if that thrilling Col-StL matchup on the final Sunday of the regular season had gone 1-0 to the Avs instead of to the Blues. Sharks would’ve had the Blues in the first round. They were fodder, so the Sharks advance. …To play Chicago (whose first round was unaffected by the final day), or Anaheim if the Ducks were to beat Detroit. Would the Sharks have gotten out of the second round?
Could this scenario have masked current problems – like Michalek is not a playoff player; Cheechoo cannot play anything but top line; and Nabby was protected by a prolific offense this year.

The front office did a superb job of addressing last year’s hole on defense, now we’ll see if they do a similar job addressing role players who can contribute on both ends.

It’s also important to point to the Hawks defense. We have Boyle and that’s about it. They have Keith, Seabrook and Campbell – either of those three would be our no. 2 defenseman behind Boyle, and all three contributed greatly to Hawks success.

In many ways the Ducks were a bad matchup for the Sharks. They had quality depth on defense which helped neutralize the Sharks depth up front. They had a big, strong center in Getzlaf as well as some decent sized wingers which helped neutralize the Sharks big forwards like Thornton and Marleau. And, as I stated above, the Ducks PK pretty much neutralized the Sharks PP.

Would the Sharks have done better against the Flames? Yes, probably so. Canucks? Yeah, probably, though they have good goaltending too (most of the time).