W-O-W.  That’s how Jamie Baker described the keep-in Dan Boyle performed at the blueline before he passed to Thornton, who then dumped it into the slot for Pavelski, and Heatley cleaned up the garbage for the Sharks’ fourth goal.  This is after Dan Boyle made Ruslan Fedotenko and Martin Skoula look like a couple of beer leaguers, faking and deking right and left before burying a low wrist shot far side that chased Marc-Andre Fleury from the Pittsburgh net.  Second in the league in points by a defenseman, Boyle has played the first month of the season with a broken thumb, and we witnessed last night what can happen when Danny is 100%.  Holy crap.  Is this guy fun to watch or what?

But Jamie’s exclamation about the clinic Boyle put on really applies to the whole 5-0 Sharks trouncing of the defending Stanley Cup champions.  Actually, it wasn’t completely unlike the win the Sharks handed to the Pens last year at this time, though that one had a much more modest score (2-1).  Sidney Crosby is still a handful, and he got a few dynamite chances, but we saw none of the breakdowns the Sharks commited against Columbus a few weeks ago in leaving Rick Nash alone in the slot, or the head scratcher against Washington in leaving Ovechkin alone on a 2-on-1.  The Sharks quietly dominated play much of the game, and answered the bell with physicality when Pittsburgh got tired of being humiliated.  I think Jody Shelley’s fight against Eric Godard was the best one I’ve seen him fight in two years.

The Sharks are again on top of the NHL in points (although Colorado is tied with us with a game in hand), and many of the kinks have worked themselves out.  Pavelski, despite missing 15 games, was an integral part of everything last night.  Malhotra chipped in on the power play.  Scott Nichol continued his domination in faceoffs, got an assist, and had several scoring opportunities.  We witnessed last night how good the Sharks can be.  All this without Devin Setoguchi, Rob Blake, or Torrey Mitchell in the lineup. Of course the next question out most Sharks fans’ mouths will be “but can they do it in April?”

I’m getting tired of that question.  I’m savoring this win.

Because I have U-verse, that means I can’t get Center Ice (stupid AT&T).  The one plus with U-verse is I get great internet bandwidth at home, which makes NHL Gamecenter an obvious choice.  A bit more money than Center Ice with several more features.  The big downside is obvious- you can’t crack a brew in front of the TV at home and watch Canes-Sens.

The live streaming is just ok.  Not sure if it’s the server load or what, but I generally get better video performance with hulu or other video sites (admittedly that’s not live).  The “Adaptive” streaming mode, which gives you tivo-like features as well as changing quality of video depending on your pipe, is a decent compromise.  When the quality goes down, the video gets a bit more pixelated and the puck harder to follow, but at least the link stays up.  If you aren’t in adaptive mode and the network slows, the whole video freezes for a moment or two, which gets infuriating very quickly.  Adaptive mode also enables you to watch up to four games simultaneously.  Click on the game you want to get the sound from that feed.  It’s pretty intuitive.  I don’t really use (or have a use for) the in-game features like chat and running stats, and even if I did they are overlayed on top of the video.  Why would I want to block my own view with that crap?

The big benefit to getting NHL Gamecast is the games archive.  You can get games all the way back to the 2007-2008 season, or games from just a few days ago.  Because Tom asked in the last thread about the Pens, I watched their Thursday night matchup with the Kings.

The biggest annoyance with Gamecast is the way you access archived games.  Across the top of the screen is the schedule, going back only a few days.  That’s one way to access games that already happened.  This is good, although I wish that scroll went back a week or more instead of a couple of days.  The other way to access an old game is very backwards- you choose the team from a list, then the opponent, then the date.  I want to choose a game by two different methods: by date, and by team then date.  For instance, if I want to scout the Sharks opponent, I have to know who they played last (and the date) in order to watch that game.  Dumb.  You should be able to choose a team, then have that team’s schedule appear.  Choose the game you want from the list.  The other thing is, that backwards method is only for the games that don’t appear in the schedule on top.  I tried to choose Pens-Kings from that list, by selecting Archive, then this season, the Pittsburgh, but LA wasn’t in the opponents list.  Really dumb, and I almost just gave up then, figuring the archive wasn’t available yet.

Anyway, once you actually get into the archived game (assuming you found it), the video quality is great.  You can even picture-in-picture (or multi-play) with other archived games.  That is really sweet.  One problem- if you switch to multi-game from single game, it starts the single game you’ve been watching over from the beginning.  And there’s no way to skip ahead, except by 10-second increments. This almost makes multi-game archive viewing useless.  Another thing- if I have the game paused for a while (to write parts of this post, for instance) sometimes the whole thing freezes up, and I have to start the game over again.  Clearly, there’s room for improvement with NHL Gamecast.  Overall grade: C+.

After all this playing around, I finally get around to watching the Kings-Pens contest on Thursday night.  The Kings were on a major hot streak at the time, and continued it by beating the Pens 5-2, cracking the Pens perfect away record so far this year.  This sounds like a beatdown, but in fact the Pens were up 2-1 until Kopitar tied it almost 7 minutes into the third.  The go-ahead goal didn’t happen until there were less than 8 minutes left in the game.  It was a pretty even matchup until then, with both goalies making very good saves.  They had to because the D on both sides seemed a bit weak.  The Pens did play without Malkin, Gonchar, and Tyler Armstrong.  All three will probably be out tonight, and according to this, even Alex Goligoski is questionable.  That’s huge.  Goligoski has 13 points, only one behind Boyle, and has really stepped up with their top offensive defenseman (Gonchar) out.  It’s been Letang and GoGo on their top PP unit, and they might have to put Brooks Orpik up there tonight.

The Pens top line is still very dangerous- Bill Guerin had a ton of chances against the Kings, and we all remember how annoying Chris Kunitz can be since he played with the Ducks.  The second line is much easier to handle, with Staal used to playing with Kennedy and Cooke, now he might be playing with Fedotenko and Chris Bourque.  I hope the Sharks can jump on that weakness, though they have injury troubles of their own.  With Blake out, there is no defensive depth.  Glad we get the last change tonight- if we get the wrong matchup against the top line, there could be trouble.  And now with the news Pavs is back, and Crosby a bit banged up, I have to call a win for the Sharks.

In the “who cares” department, you may have heard the last podcast where we beat up on the Columbus announcers a little bit.  The Pens announcers, Paul Steigerwald and Bob Errey (one-time Sharks captain) are on the opposite end of the spectrum.  Great play-by-play and commentary, up there with Randy/Drew and Dan/Jamie.  On the radio side, which I didn’t listen to, is the legendary Mike Lange, who always sounds like he smoked 10 cigars then swallowed a bag of charcoal right before the game starts.  And he says stuff like “scratch my back with a hacksaw, he SCORES”.  Can’t beat that.

We’ll see you tonight with our Dudes On Hockey shirts on.  Come and say hi if you see us.  Might I suggest a free beer to break the proverbial ice?

Welcome to the new Dudes On Hockey, which takes care of all your San Jose Sharks podcasting needs, and hopefully much of your San Jose Sharks blogging needs.  For other great San Jose Sharks blogs, see the blogroll on the right.  Some new things to think about:

1. Threaded comments!  Just click the “Reply” link beneath anyone’s comment, and you can reply to that person.
2. Easy sharing.  If you click on an individual post, you will see some sharing links at the bottom which enables you to quickly share the post on facebook, twitter, or a number of other sites.
3. Synergy.  You can get the podcast feeds and the blog feed (which contain the podcasts) separately.  Click on the links there on the top right to see what’s what.  In the course of this conversion and upgrade, I had to change how the podcasts get posted here, which changes the feed link.  I did some things to hopefully make it seamless for all of you, but if you happen to not get podcasts in your player a week or two from now, visit back and update your podcast feed.  I will post more on that if/when it happens.
4. More control.  DOH has its own host, and we have full access to do whatever we want, be it look-and-feel or features.  If there are things you want, or don’t like, we have the ability to change those things.  Within reason.  And no, “write better posts” doesn’t count.  We all know we’re not doing that.

As Jerry said in the last thread- the Sharks.  They’ve strung together three good wins in a row- that’s wins against two of the top teams in the West points-wise (Colorado and L.A.) and a beatdown win on the road against a struggling Carolina team.  And having Eric Staal leave the game early on Sunday certainly didn’t hurt.

Now we just got word that Nabokov was named the third NHL Star of the Week.  Even though Nabby got (and deserves) kudos, I still want to see more Thomas Greiss.  The conventional wisdom is that Nabby won one or more of those games last week for the Sharks, but I wouldn’t mind seeing that put to the test.  My new fantasy hero Andrew Raycroft pitched a shutout last night for the Canucks, so even backups can have a good game now and again.  As Doug has said before, Nabby generally misses a little time each year, so do we really want Greiss riding the pine for weeks before he finally gets the call?  Could McLellan get freaky again and start Greiss on the second half of the back-to-back this week, that is, against Detroit?

Speaking of that game, the Canucks shut down the Avs, who really looked rather ordinary to me last week against the Sharks.  Were it not for Craig Anderson, it would have been much worse for Colorado.  Could it be this team is regressing back to where we thought they’d be?  Some good young players, but not enough horses to get to the playoffs.   After Matt Duschene and Wojtek Wolski and… uh… Ryan O’Reilly (?) there are not a ton of bright spots in the lineup.

And I hope to say here that Ryane Clowe doesn’t suck after three good games (shootout winner against LA, finally a goal against the Avs, and two assists yesterday), but it’s still a little soon.  We all hoped he’d snap out of it, and it appears he has, but let’s see 10 games of good play before the Newfoundlander gets off the hook.  I have to say, “The Newfoundlander” wouldn’t be a bad nickname, but it does remind one of Christopher Lambert and one of the worst sequels of all time.

New podcast here.  This week we dive into the various questions about the 2010-2011 Sharks, and all the uncertainty coming down the road.  Marleau, Nabby, Seto, Pavs, Blake, Ortmeyer, Nichol, Staubitz, Shelley, Malhotra, and Vesce will all either restricted or unrestricted free agents.  We try to look into the crystal ball and tell the future- who will be wearing a Sharks uni this time next year?

That’s an ongoing question, but the question of the day is the title of this post- “So Who Sucks?”.  There have already been a number of ups and downs for this Sharks squad, with some obvious (?) winners, like Patrick Marleau, and some obvious not-so-winners, like Ryane Clowe.  In times like these, I like to turn to behindthenet.ca, because Gabe Desjardins (who lives in the Bay Area, go figure) tabulates some statistics that I think are much more illuminating than your normal +/- and other things.

Here’s the page for the Sharks so far, sorted by Gabe’s RATING statistic, which is simply the difference between a team’s 5-on-5 +/- when that player is on the ice versus when they aren’t.  This controls for the quality of the team- a very good ES (even strength) team like Boston had the #1 and #2 +/- guys in the league last year, but those two guys didn’t even have the best rating on their own team.

The thing about sports stats, and hockey stats even more so, is no one number tells the whole story.  Look at the Sharks numbers so far this year.  The highest rated player that’s played more than two games is Kent Huskins.  But look at his quality of competition (QUALCOMP) and quality of teammates (QUALTEAM).  The first number is low, and the next one is high.  In fact, the only guy on the team that plays with better teammates is his partner, Jason Demers.  Now we look at a guy like Vlasic, whom many have blasted so far this year, maybe for good reason.  His rating is way down on the list (yet above Rob Blake), but his quality of competition is second on the team to only Thornton, and his quality of teammates is by far the worst.  Huskins and Demers seem to be playing the most sheltered minutes on the team, and Vlasic is out there against the best, with the worst linemates.

So the question remains- who sucks?  Is it possible that no one really sucks (yet)?  Even Ryane Clowe, who couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, has a positive rating, a tough quality of competition, and a fairly low quality of teammates.  He’s not providing the wind to said boat, but he’s not drilling holes in the hull either (on the ice for 8 ES goals for, 6 against).  12 games is still a very small sample size.  Look at the numbers for all of last year- this seems right, doesn’t it?  Dammit, I was kind of hoping I could point to somebody and say they suck.  Hey, Jeff Finger, you suck!

Before you jump all over me for the above title or think that perhaps this blog has been taken hostage by Ryan Garner, hear me out….

Most of us have been guilty of jumping on top of this team during the early season, casting our reel of doubts wide into the lake of hockey disappointment yet again, and as Sharks fans we have good cause. We’ve been treated like Jennifer Aniston lately, led to believe that we were getting the hot guy (Lord Stanley…not Brad Pitt) only to be cruelly dumped and cast aside like the aging, talentless wonders we are with great legs and pouty lips.

Here’s what I’m getting at….The Sharks just went 4-2-0 on a brutal six game road trip highlighted by a win in the Garden and a great win last night against a team I think will be in the Stanley Cup Finals, the Philadelphia Flyers. Did they have a misstep in Tampa Bay, why yes – they did – but don’t the wins in MSG and Philly counter that? Aren’t they playing this road trip without one of their best players (Joe Pavelski) and an important member of their bottom six (Torrey Mitchell)? They even won in Philly without Seto and the red-hot Vesce. Greiss actually looked like an NHL goalie (first ten minutes of the 1st period excluded) and has likely earned the trust of Coach McLellan for more frequent starts. Manny Malhotra came out of his shell and was a factor and Ortmeyer made us all forget that masked man Thomas Plihal ever existed.

So why are some fans (myself included) so quick to jump on and off the Sharks wagon as this team continues to come together or fall apart? Is it because we’re expecting to be disappointed? Let’s be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t take this team to task when things go wrong or be grumpy after a bad loss to a team that semi-sucks (hello Tampa) – but should we toss them on the recycle heap? This road trip we’ve seen that this team has some depth in Vesce, McGinn and Couture (who had a solid debut last night highlighted by the 4th line shift of the year that almost led to a goal), we’ve seen potential in a back-up goalie and the bottom six are so much better than last year, there’s no comparison. Are they playing consistently as well as they should? No, but wouldn’t we rather see this come together in time to sustain a long playoff run than peaking now and giving us what we expect in the end, another early exit? I vote for the former.

The Sharks can’t win every game 4-1. They can’t always score the first goal. They can’t always make the perfect play. In the Philly game last night, there were 10 guys playing for San Jose who were either on another NHL team or playing for Worcester during most of the 2008-09 season. When over 50% of your roster is stocked with The New Guys, there are going to be up and downs.

The last two games of this road trip have inspired me to be a stronger fan, a better fan, a fan with conviction in his heart to stick with this team through the good and the bad….well, at least until they lose to LA on Wednesday.

So the Sharks accomplished their first mission- starting the game strongly against Atlanta.  Previously on this road trip, they’ve been horrid in the first period, or even the first half of the game, before trying to mount a comeback.  It worked in New York against the Isles and Rangers, no so well Thursday night against the Lightning.

Tonight, they switched the whole plan around.  Joe scored in the first minute, then Heater added one, and Patty scored in the first minute of the second.  After a digustingly bad call that should have given Marleau another goal, Todd White scored on the next shift to make it 3-1, and I started to have a bit of a bad feeling.  I did feel much better when Patty scored again about halfway through the second.  I started to breathe easy again.

But then the wheels basically fell off, and it was a freakin’ miracle they escaped 4-3.  The stats don’t tell the story- 10-7 in shots the third period, but there were so many times the Thrashers were in the Sharks zone for over a minute I lost count.  It felt like the Sharks were on the kill for the entire third period.  And though Kovalchuk left the game in the first with an injury (like Devin Setoguchi did) the Thrashers had more than enough jump to make the Sharks look like a bumbling lower-echelon team.  Since Atlanta only had seven shots, I guess the Sharks managed to neutralize many of the scoring chances, but the low cycle seemed to go on and on and on.

I’m trying to decide which is worse, come out well and slowly piss it away, or come out flat and fight to get back in it.  It’s a hobson’s choice, but actually, I’ll choose the ugliness we witnessed tonight.  It’s easier to hold onto a lead than come back against a team that doesn’t care about scoring anymore, as the Sharks clearly didn’t in the final period.  No word on Seto’s injury yet, but if he’s out, that’s a huge blow.  I’d probably put him as the second best Shark so far this year, behind only Marleau.  9 goals in 11 games, at this rate Patty’ll score 8671 goals by New Year’s.  Check the math on that one, I may have forgotten to carry the two. Just to be safe, are there any other letters we can take off of his sweater? I think the Mike Aldrich should have him skate tomorrow night with a M RLE U jersey, just to make sure everyone knows he doesn’t deserve an A.

The question of course being, “Can the Sharks continue to win despite giving up the first goal and not really playing hard until the second period?”  In the pros, you can only play a 40-minute game down a goal or two before it all catches up with you.  Even against the team that has had the #1 overall and #2 overall picks in the last two drafts.  I guess Steven Stamkos had his sophomore slump a year early (he’s that advanced!) and is rapidly turning into a very dangerous player.  The Sharks found that out last night firsthand, when Stamkos had two goals giving him 6 on the year, now tied for 9th in the league.

So what was different about the Lightning game versus the Ranger game?  The Sharks never snapped out of it.  They were one more game into a long road trip, and couldn’t automatically count on flipping the light switch, to use an entirely overused turn of phrase.  Also, I must say, Nabby wasn’t nearly as sharp last night as we’ve seen him early in the road trip, and adds to my frustration about the coaches’ complete aversion to Thomas Greiss.  Is he telling lame jokes on the bench?  Won’t play pinochle on the flights?  I don’t care- put him in the game already.

I’m reminded of a question we asked ourselves in a podcast just before the season started- would it be a really bad thing if the Sharks came out of the gate mediocre?  I think we’re going to find out.  There’s certainly one positive thing: no one is overconfident about San Jose right now.  We’ve seen the best and the worst this team has to offer in the first ten games, and now the guys need to isolate the good and figure out a way to mass-produce it.

Latest podcast here. All things Ryan Vesce and Sharks reported on.

The Sharks will be riding high tonight after total dismantling the NY Rangers in the Garden on Monday night. This should be a game that the coaches and players can point to that when the Sharks are on their game, they can storm into any opposing teams arena, even a place as vaunted as MSG, and put on quite a show.

Going into this afternoon’s game in Tampa Bay, the Sharks are facing a team whose top players are really struggling to find their own chemistry together in their defensive zone. The top two lines are a combined -18 which is muy brutal. We’ve said it’s taken the Sharks top six some time to learn how to play together after adding Heatley and losing Pavs, and they are a combined +10. On the surface, this appears to be a game the Sharks should cruise through – Tampa has been allowing 3.49 GAA in their first seven games, which is third worst in the league. The Bolts have been blasted in their local media for giving up after falling down early – which we know won’t happen against San Jose since we’ve given up the first goal in eight out of nine early games. So will the Bolts take the criticism from the media and the coach to heart and try and make a point tonight? I think they’ll try and it’s possible San Jose will fall down early YET AGAIN, but the Sharks have got this comeback thing down to a science and should take this game running away – 4-1 Sharks in the end tonight.

I know it’s early (this is my new catchphrase) but I’d like to call everyone’s attention to Logan Couture’s stats at Worcester in the first five games – 3 goals, 5 assists = 8 points. He’s scored two game winning goals, so this is great progress for a young player that Doug Wilson is counting on to be a valuable cog in the Sharks future top six. Good stuff.

We will be recording/releasing the podcast tonight.  There are some good questions and comments in the last thread that we plan to tackle tonight, if you want to contribute more to the discussion, you can comment here or there, or send us an email.