Ok, maybe I’ll lose a little credibility, but I didn’t have that much to begin with. Either way, I avenged my first round loss against grier by beating him handily in the second round prediction department, 7 games off to 10. Good Rangers pick, by the way.

I did watch the Wings take Dallas apart last night, and I remembered when Detroit was up 4-0 in the second that I never posted my CF predictions. Now you have the Western one. Quick observation- Detroit makes decisions about 5 times faster than the Sharks do. If the guy with the puck isn’t going full speed, he quickly passes it to someone who is. There’s none of this “draw the defender to you to open lanes” crap. They make their own lanes with speed. Even when they have nobody around they still press the pace. And I was pretty shocked to see how effective it was against a speedy team like Dallas. The Stars got their counter-punch in the turnover that led to Morrow’s goal (how automatic is that guy?) but if Detroit has the puck 75% of the time, there’s not going to be enough mistakes to capitalize on.

For the East, now that Timmonen is out for Philly, they’re going to have even more trouble stopping the waves of Penguins looking for scoring chances. Only if Biron finds another gear (and I don’t even know if that’s possible, given how well he’s been playing) will the Flyers have a chance. Pittsburgh in five.

Clearly one of the biggest discussion topics for Sharks fans until July 1st will be the potential for signing Brian Campbell to a long term deal. Multiple reports around the trading deadline indicated the problem with Buffalo’s proposals wasn’t the amount of money, but the term of the contract. Rumors were that Campbell wanted more years than the Sabres were willing to give him. TSN reported shortly before the deadline that the Sabres offered him 3 years, less than $6M per year.

The question is, what is a likely amount that Campbell could get on the open market, and is he worth it?

The Calgary Flames actually offer a decent answer to the first question. They have two defensemen that bookend Campbell fairly well. On one side is Dion Phaneuf, a Norris nominee, huge hitter, pain in the ass, and solid 50-60 point player. Basically, Campbell’s offensive output plus physicality and a bit of defense. I say only a “bit of defense” because Phaneuf is barely in the top half of GAON/60 (that’s even-strength goals against per 60 minutes). Campbell is worse by about a quarter of a goal per game, but he’s better in GFON/60 (that’s even strength goals for per 60) by about a quarter of a goal.

Phaneuf starts a new contract next year, averaging $6.5M per year for six years.

On the other side of Campbell is Robyn Regehr. Regehr is a solid defensive defenseman, and we all remember his matchup on Jumbo the entire Calgary series. Regehr has a much better GAON/60 than Campbell (and Phaneuf, by the way) but his GFON/60 is a half-goal worse than Campbell. More or less what we would expect. All three players have roughly the same quality of teammates and quality of competition.

Regehr also starts a new contract next year, averaging $4M per year for five years. His individual stats this year were 20 pts, +11, and I’d say Calgary got a pretty good deal. Better than Hannan’s numbers, and Hannan got $4.5M.

Pretty clear Campbell falls within these two somewhere. One thing to mention- defensive defenseman are more available than a player with Campbell’s offensive skill, so a premium will be paid for that. Scarcity creates a market.

A third data point is Brian Rafalski. Rafalski had 55 points (same as last year with NJ) and was +27. He had a much better GAON/60 than any of the players mentioned above, and a better GFON/60 than anybody but Campbell. It should be noted his quality of teammates stat is off the friggin’ charts, so his numbers are inflated somewhat. Rafalski just started a contract that pays him $6M for five years.

I’d put Rafalski a bit above Campbell, so I think we’ve triangulated his market spot pretty accurately. Final verdict: 6 years, $35M. Given Campbell’s age and playing style (Phaneuf is going to get hurt more than Campbell, which is a nice way of saying Campbell is a bit of a wuss) I think he’s worth it. A power play QB is something the Sharks have needed for years, and now we have a great one right in our lap. The Sharks, for whatever reason, just don’t sign big-time free agents, and our early playoff exit (again) isn’t going to change that. All of our best players were traded for and re-signed, or drafted. Let’s add Campbell to that list.

Great story in the Merc today and on TSN that has a confident Jeremy Roenick all but confirming he will return in Teal next season for another run at Lord Stanley. He stood firmly behind Ron Wilson and expressed his desire for Doug Wilson to tweak the roster, not make whole-sale changes.

An interesting stance from a player who wears his emotions on his sleeve. If anyone might speak out against Ron Wilson, it could have been J.R., if not publicly but during his one on one meeting with DW. So it would appear that early signs point to maybe no coaching changes and DW rolling the dice one more time with these boys – who might have finally learned their lesson from their post season hard knocks.

I have two early predictions for the coming weeks.

1. Brian Campbell will resign with the Sharks before the UFA market opens and Doug Wilson will have to deal with how to clear the salary cap room afterwards. I think six years/36M will do the trick. He apparently loves it here and wants to play with Joe.

2. Brian Boucher will also be retained early, so the Sharks don’t have to go through those goaltending questions marks in camp. Sharks will need to act fast because Boucher’s value went up with his strong, yet limited performances during the season. He can still goaltend on the NHL level, with a good team in front of him.

I’m not sure how I feel/what to think about some of the other roster and coaching decisions that are ahead. I still need a few days.

So for the third year in a row, the Sharks bow out in game 6 of round 2.  I won’t be able to say anything about the game tonight and the Sharks this postseason without resorting to a bunch of lame cliches, so I will say this.  That fucking sucked.

What a performance by Nabby and you can’t fault the Sharks heart in the last three games, it’s just too bad it was too late and a real shame the game was decided on a powerplay. You knew it was coming, and when it did, the Sharks likely wouldn’t be able to stop the Stars PP they’ve struggled to contain with fresh legs.

More from me later in the week, but for now we all have to wonder if we saw Ron Wilson’s last game behind the bench and the final glimpse of this current roster. I’m going to take a few days to try and put it all in perspective.

Last minute reminder- I’ll be on the Teal Spiel again tonight from 10-11pm on KNTS 1220AM.  You can stream the show from the last link, or if you miss it, it’ll be posted as a podcast a couple days later at the first link.  The phone number to call into the show is 1-800-516-1220.  I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping we’ll be talking about game 7 instead who should be s%^!canned.

I’ve often seen these people, these squares at the table, short stack and long odds against. All their outs gone. One last card in the deck that can help them. I used to wonder how they could let themselves get into such bad shape, and how the hell they thought they could turn it around.

That’s where the Sharks were last night, going into the third period down 2-0. Looking down the barrel of another disappointing postseason, as they have been since Tuesday, but now it was real. Dead serious. And instead of folding up the tent the way the Avs did against Detroit, they figured, what the hell, let’s see if we can come back. Against the team that is 8-0-1 in their last nine at the Tank, a team that has outscored their opponents by over a dozen goals in the third.

The disallowed goals were a bit of luck, no doubt. But the Sharks made their own luck as well, finding a way to dig out the case ace and shove it up the Stars’ ass.

Here’s the way I feel right now- savor it, Sharks fans. The game last night was one of the best I’ve ever attended. And even though we’ll all be bummed if the Sharks don’t pull it out, let’s recognize that the boys in teal didn’t have any quit last night, and they showed something we questioned all year. No one knows if it will be enough to advance, but it’s enough to live another day.

Warning: original research and numbers to follow. If you think sports bloggers don’t have anything to contribute to society, click away quickly!

We’ve heard the stat before, only twice in NHL history has a team come from 3-0 down to win the series. According to a new script I wrote that extracts the data from hockey-reference.com, the actual number of 3-0 series is 176, not 151 as reported by Mark Purdy. I’m going from 1939, the first year I found that had seven game series. Before that, they did all kinds of crazy things like playing two games with the winner being the team with the most goals combined. And there was a team called the Maroons. That’s just weird. Anyway, that means the real odds are 2/176, or 1.14%. If someone can explain this discrepancy, please email me or post a comment.

However, now we have more information- the 1.14% is no longer accurate because of the 176 series in NHL history, only 53 of them (30.1%) actually went to game 5. The other 69.9% series were a sweep. Also interesting:

• 11 (6.25%) went to game 6
• 5 (2.8%) went to game 7

But now we can operate knowing the series is 3-1. According to my research, which agrees with this page, there have been 20 teams that came back from a 3-1 deficit (including the two I mentioned above). The odds have gone up, now we’re at 20 out of 239, which is 8.4%. Now we’re into very long shot territory, instead of kiss-your-ass-goodbyetown. So how to these teams do going forward?

• 87 series went to game 6 (35.4%)
• 38 series went to game 7 (15.9%)

The question I’m trying to answer is, what are the historical chances the Sharks win game 5? If you want to operate as if the games are completely independent events, we use the latter section, which is about 1-in-3. If we think that previous occurrences in the series will affect the Sharks’ chances in game 6, then we’re only talking about 1-in-5 (11 out of 53). Other interesting notes:

• Home teams win about 58% of the time in the playoffs (1839 of 3178)
• The team that won game 4 wins game 5 only 47% of the time (203 of 432)

It’s just a gut feeling (and I’m a homer) but I think it’s more towards the upper number than the lower. So flip a coin twice for the Sharks, and if it comes up heads both times, the series will still be alive Saturday morning.

I have to admit I was shocked that the Sharkies won tonight. This is all good for San Jose and nothing positive for Dallas, who have to get on a plane tomorrow and think about what they did wrong to deserve another trip to No. Cal. The Sharks have nothing to lose and should let it all hang out. No one expects them to win, everyone expects them to lose on Friday and the atmosphere at the Tank will likely be tepid at best.

Here the magic “if”. IF the Sharks put together two good periods at the Tank, get a lead and somehow, someway, the fans start to believe that maybe the Sharks can force another Game Seven to top the last Game Seven – the Tank will be the Stars worst nightmare. This is quite a leap and for this Sharks fans, I’m just happy to not hear the words “sweep” tomorrow when I go to work.

That flicker of hope is still alive. IF the Sharks win on Friday – and that is a HUGE IF….Dallas could be in for a New York Yankees type meltdown of epic proportions.

The Sharks managed to stave off a sweep tonight with a fairly gutsy victory in Dallas. I say “fairly” because there were still extended stretches where the Sharks played passively, and allowed the Stars to swarm. Nabby saved the Sharks’ bacon again several times, which is what great goalies do. Marleau had a second shorthanded breakaway, and again converted. I understand if people want to question his leadership style, but you can’t question his ability to score when his team most needs it.

Of course it wasn’t the decisive victory that we wanted to see, a clear sign that the Sharks may just beat the odds and come back from a 3-0 deficit. Morrow and Ribeiro are just as dangerous and effective as they’ve ever been. That puzzle is as of yet unsolved. Turco continues to come up big- there’s no solving that.  The Sharks give up too much time and space, and oftentimes do not press the pace when their own is threatened.

Can the Sharks continue to dance on the brink? Was tonight just a postponement of the inevitable, just the Sharks giving the home fans a chance to see the disappointment up close and in person?

Uncle Jonathan’s Corncob Pipe, I hope not.