HAHAHAHA MONEY!!!

I never know to express the action of signing again. If I don’t hyphenate, it looks like they are resigning, like Nixon.  But is re-sign really correct English?  And why am I writing about this when the two major Sharks free agents have, uh, accepted new contracts?

Now, per Bob McKenzie’s twitter, we see that Marleau has signed a new contract worth $6.9M per year for four years, and Pavelski’s is good for $4M per year for the same duration.  First of all, I’m surprised that Marleau’s number was so high, but I guess it makes sense after a 44-goal season.  Like others have mentioned, I thought it was somewhat likely Marleau would get a ‘lifetime’ contract, for 7 or more years, with a more manageable cap hit.  Given that Marleau’s wife is from the Bay Area, and he certainly has roots in the community, it would seem a long-term deal would be right up his alley. But for a player who’s main asset is his speed, I can see the logic in only paying him until he’s 34.

Pavelski’s deal, however, could be a little on the low side.  During a podcast discussion we figured his salary range would be between $4M and $5M (between Kesler and Staal, in line with Plekanec’s production), and we just made it.  $4M for a good two-way second-line center that may be named the captain in two months?  Sounds like a good deal to me.  I’m not going to go into the whole cap situation just yet, but this should enable the Sharks to sign Devin Setoguchi to a new contract as well.  $3M sounds like the right number, given he only had 19 goals last year.

In other (good) news, Pollak reports the Sharks did a minor deal with Atlanta that greased the skids for Chicago sending Dustin Byfuglien there.  That’s Doug Wilson, always the facilitator.  Because of a certain maximum number of contracts that could be held per the CBA, ATL was up against the limit, and the Sharks were the white knight.  DW took a couple of low level prospects (and a seventh round pick) off of Don Waddell’s hands so the Thrashers could accept Byfuglien, Ben Eager, Brent Sopel, and Akim Aliu’s contracts.   I like that deal for Atlanta, and I like that deal for the Sharks.  Get the big lug out of the West.  It does give the Hawks some cap relief, but it cost them a top 6 forward and a great prospect in Aliu.  Atlanta, for once, seems to have this trade solidly in the win column.

All this, and we haven’t even made it to the draft yet.  Go Sharks.

Mike and Doug continue the discussion they began on ChompTalk last Sunday, speaking of the Sharks demise at the hands (wings?) of the Hawks, and Philadelphia’s chances to triumph in the finals.  But most importantly, the Dudes start the important due diligence of examining each of the actors that may not be back next year, starting with Doug Wilson, Todd McLellan, Patrick Marleau, and Evgeni Nabokov

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

My playoff beard is better than Mike's! And Doug's, but that goes without saying.

If you asked me the chances of the Sharks taking a 3-0 lead on the Red Wings in this series, I would have put the chances of that well south of 5%.  The Wings are healthy, seasoned, and contain some of the best talent the league has to offer.  But for some reason, the ultimate chokers, the San Jose Sharks, have managed to come from behind in every single game and win.  I feel like I’m delirious.  Who put this lovely mixture of crank, LSD, and OxyContin into my breakfast cereal?  It’s FAN-tastic.

Last night was a come-from-behind to trump all others, because the Sharks were down by two goals this time, and in the third period to boot.  If you go back to our conference semis preview where Doug and I were trying to convince each other the Sharks could win, one of the things I said was “Jimmy Howard can be beat.”  If I were to pick one major problem with the Wings game, it would be that.  Yeah, there’s been some low turnovers by the Wings that have led to extended cycles and scoring chances.  But that Logan Couture goal last night, while heads-up and tricky, should not have gone in the net.  We’ve seen Nabby give up that goal before, and rightly excoriated him.  Howard, while certainly not the only reason why the Wings are in a unbelievable 3-0 hole, is not exactly baling water as fast as the others.

I do want to talk about the OT goal for a minute, because it does seem to illustrate two problems the Wings have had.  One is  Howard (series SV% = 0.886).  It’s very surprising to me that he was that far out of position when Marleau received Joe’s All-World pass.  And it was all-world: perfect timing, perfect speed for Marleau to shoot it on net, right on the tape.  Just a thing of beauty, and every bit as good as that spin-around backhand pass to Marleau that has made all of those highlight reels.  The second is the defense.  Every defensemen knows that on a 2-on-1 you keep your stick in the passing lane.  Brian Rafalski, for reasons unknown, seemed to be directing traffic, conducting a tiny invisible symphony, or maybe just trying to scratch an itch on his calf.  The blade of his stick was nowhere near the lane to Marleau.

It also perfectly illustrates something good for the Sharks – JOE THORNTON IS SHOOTING. Sakes alive, what a wonderful world we live in!  You think Rafalski would even consider taking the shooting lane if Joe hadn’t scored earlier, and hadn’t picked up his shot rate in the series? Joe averaged well under 2 shots per game in the regular season, and is over 3 shots per game in this series.  Even though he was only credited for one shot last night, which happened to be the goal, his willingness to direct the puck at the net (he took 6 shots in game two, and missed 5) is yet another reason why the Sharks are winning.

Even with all of these good things, the Sharks are still not done.  Not by a long shot.  Let’s say they take a game off, lose game 4, come home, and Detroit wins a squeaker.  That could easily happen, in which case my ass will be in full production of masonry products.  In my head, I estimated the chances of the Sharks winning the series after game two a little better than 50%.  Now, I put their chances at around 75-80%.  It ain’t over folks.  But the best thing about it is, we know the Sharks don’t think it’s over either.

New podcast will be posted tonight.

Guess that fish stew from the taco cart was a bad idea

With Marleau being literally a last-minute scratch (he participated in the pre-game skate), it looks as if the ghost of Ed Belfour had made a comeback, despite our masterful exorcism.  I’ll pass on a bit of a rumor, because it’s harmless- we heard it was food poisoning.  That’s from only one source, but it does jive with the official report: that it’s an “illness” and not an “injury”.

The Wings played almost exactly as expected.  Dazzling puckhandling, good defensive movement, great speed.  And luckily for us, mediocre goaltending.  The Sharks lost the even strength battle 3-2, but won the special teams battle 2-0, and that was enough to win game 1.  I wouldn’t bank on that plan for future games.  Good parts of the game had Doug and I biting our nails, wringing our hands, and puckering our… well, you get it.  It was nerve wracking.

All of this will make for a great series.  A series that I desperately want to enjoy, but will have extreme difficulty doing so.  This is great hockey, people.  Two great teams battling it out, with quite different styles.  The Sharks crash and bang, go deep in the corners, Big Joe or Clowe extract it, blast from the point and sit in Howard’s lap.  Detroit will have five guys on the ice at all times that can dangle, with behind the back passes, one-handed dekes, and open ice being created out of thin air.  It would be so great to watch if I didn’t have an ulcer.

Marleau will hopefully avoid all Sizzlers, Red Lobsters, and the Hometown Buffet, and the Sharks will get their 44 goal scorer back for game two.  One thing I mentioned to Doug as we were walking back, is the Wings have the capacity to lay a big turd in a game now and again.  The Wings were up in the series 3-2, at home, and just forgot how to play in game six.  They were down 5-1 in the third before a late goal made it a slightly more respectable 5-2.  The Sharks’ worst game of the playoffs so far was the 6-5 shootout in game two vs the Avs, which they won.  We certainly can’t count on a lapse from Detroit, but it makes me feel a little better that it’s possible.

In other news, Doug and I have entered into a wager with WingsFanInSharksLand, who happens to be a friend of ours, and despite his obvious character flaw, is actually a really good guy.  I don’t want to give away the stakes,  but let’s just say either way the series turns out, it will provide some entertainment for you all.

Last night, the prominent emotion I felt after Pavs scored was relief, and not elation.  The Sharks are seemingly back on track for the moment, tying the series, again putting up more scoring chances than the opposition, but this time they won.  I got the idea for today’s post by reading this, and to a lesser extent, tweeting this last night.  Marleau, for some reason, looks largely disinterested in this series, and outside of a couple of speedy drives to the net, has seemingly avoided the Flying Body Show that this series has been so far.  The difference in his play from Seto’s, for instance, could not be more stark.  Seto is hitting everything that moves, grinding it out, and Marleau is trying the shifty thing, neither taking nor issuing hits.  But judging a guy on how he ‘looks’ is awfully subjective, and prone to bias.  How can we judge their effectiveness?

One way is Corsi number.  This is a number that Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda talked about on the telecast many times, though they call it “shots directed at net”.  That is, shots + missed shots + blocked shots.  Corsi is merely that, but you also subtract the opponent’s number from yours.  At that point, you have something kind of a like a shot +/-.  The events are much more common than goals, so you have a much larger sample size and thus less variation.  Corsi (or Hardwick, which is the same as Corsi but doesn’t include blocked shots) can also be calculated for each individual player.  Here are the season numbers for San Jose.  I believe this is normalized for ice time, otherwise we wouldn’t have fractional numbers.  But as we can see, we have Boyle #1, and Marleau #2 (I don’t count Ferriero really).  Thanks to timeonice.com, let’s look at playoff numbers through four games (not normalized for ice time).

First thing to notice is that all of these numbers are positive, which is really remarkable.  That’s just another way of saying the Sharks have vastly out-chanced and out-shot the Avs in the series.  Also, we can see Marleau is currently 5th among forwards, and behind Kent Huskins, who was barely positive in the regular season.  Thornton and Heatley did not have good games 1 or 4 (and Heatley even missed game 3), and that accounts for their low numbers.  As one would expect, the numbers for the top line are all more or less in line for each of the games- low single digits for games 1 and 2, around 10 for game 3, and back down for game four.  The main reason why Marleau is above the other two is because of game 4, where he was +8, where Thornton was +1 and Heatley -1.  So my observation that Marleau was doing particularly bad was almost completely backwards.  Still, all in all, this chart confirms with hard numbers what we already thought- the top line is not performing.  Not even close.  If we can get those guys rolling, we can expect the Sharks to roll better too.

It’s my fault. I take full responsibility for what happened at the Tank of Wednesday night and I’m prepared to make amends.

It was my playoff beard – or lack their of. I’m not a morning person, and in my haze on Wednesday AM and deprived of all caffeine, I shaved the beginnings of my fighting facial follicles – and the Sharks lost. Rest assured that this has been corrected and because of my two day old beard, the Sharks will win four games in a row and right the wrongs and heckles from Sharks haters that we as loyal fans have been subjected to the last 48 hours.

A few other thoughts before I wander to the Tank tonight:

It didn’t make me feel much better this morning to see Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau both proclaim that tonight’s game is not considered a “must win” in their minds. Really guys? I guess we shouldn’t expect anything else from them, but I certainly hope they play with a different intensity than that quote. If not, we’ll all be pointing to those comments as the slogan for why this team fails in April.

I’m not sure what Todd McLellan doesn’t see in Jamie McGinn but he played the fewest minutes of any player on both teams in Game 1. Based on reports from practice yesterday, it appears that Ortmeyer will be in for Game 2. Does that mean we’ll see two guys glued to the pine in the 3rd period? I thought this roster was deeper than last years, but the lack of love for his 4th liners is a consistent theme from McLellan this time of year.

If the Sharks have any hope of advancing, they need to make a statement tonight. There have been lots of Game 1 upsets this week and as Bill Shakespeare once said, “One game does not a series maketh, Hamlet”, but another bomb on home ice won’t have this team feeling lots of love from their home fans as they leave the Tank and head to enemy territory.

Respect the Superstition. Grow Beard Grow.

Hey Jerky!  Don’t leave the game early!

I love this series of commercials.  And this one, linked by Puck Daddy today, is particularly poignant for Sharks fans.  Sure, it was a pretty wretched game until about 3 minutes into the third.  But don’t try to beat the traffic.  You would have missed an unbelievable flurry of goals, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.  Like this one:

This prompted perhaps the latest goalie change I’ve ever witnessed, with  only 5:20 left in the game.  It was so late (and perhaps unnoticed, because Ellis is #35, Rinne #39), that it wasn’t even announced to the crowd.  My astute section neighbor noticed it.  Didn’t help much, because Rinne faced two shots, one of them a goal by Marleau.  Thanks for stopping by Rinne.

With both Pavs and Heatley on the ice bidding for the hat trick with the goalie pulled late in the game, who scored the empty netter?  Jay Leach, from 130 feet, his first NHL goal.  A perfect ending to one of the weirdest, craziest Sharks games ever.

Oh yeah.  Boys, try and show up a little earlier next time.

This week is the Week of Secondary Scoring.  I read these posts on Fear the Fin ten days ago, and they put into blog form what everyone was a little worried about – the fact that Heater and Patty were scoring all the goals.  This week, all that changed.

My analysis is different from FTF because I included Joe Thornton, trying to make a distinction between top scorers, top lines, and balanced scoring.  Partly because I think you can’t say Heatley and Marleau would be scoring at the same clip without Big Joe’s 67 54 assists this year.  And also partly because if your top two scorers are on different lines (like Kopitar and Brown in L.A.), your scoring is more balanced than Detroit, Anaheim, and the Sharks, whose top three scorers are on the same line together.  Keep in mind this is an inexact science, since many coaches shuffle lines fairly regularly.  I got these lines from the most recent games these teams have played, thanks to timeonice.com.  Here they are, in current conference standing order.

As expected, the Sharks are way out front, the top line scoring over 20 goals more than any other top line, and accounting for more than two out of every five goals scored.

But this past week, and admittedly it’s a small sample size, it’s wildly different.  The top line, in the four games this week, scored 5 of the 22 goals scored, or 22.7%, lower than any other top line on this list.  The Olympic Line (or the Burger Line, or the HTML line, whatever) will be staying together for the conceivable future, and teams have been targeting them all season to no avail.  That’s not to say that they couldn’t suffer a letdown, maybe after the Olympics, or in the playoffs (again.  Do I really have to type ‘again’ again?).

So which is better- having an unstoppable first line, or having four very even lines like Buffalo had on Saturday?  Frankly, I want the superstars putting up superstar numbers.  If the Sharks only have three guys that can score at all, it doesn’t matter how the lines are constituted, we’ll be in for another playoff disappointment.  But the opportunities presented themselves, Boyle was out of the lineup, and the second and third lines stepped up.  I’m very encouraged.  If Patty, Jumbo, and Heater decide to put up six goals between them per game and freeze everyone else out, I’ll find a way to live with it.

San Jose is the new Regina!

A quick congratulations to Dan Boyle, Patrick Marleau, Thunder Joe and Dany Heatley for making Team Canada for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics! Hard for anyone to argue that they all don’t deserve it and it would be surprising if Babcock didn’t use the Sharks top line as a unit in Vancouver.

Has Mike Green’s Norris Trophy status dropped that much? Has the reported locker room drama in Calgary prevented their three All-Star blueliners from being on the team? How funny is it that the worst team in the West (Anaheim) has three guys on the toughest team to make in the world? That doesn’t bode well for how badly Murray has screwed up their supporting cast.

Who got the Olympic shaft the hardest, Dudes?

Beating the Ducks isn’t quite as sweet as it used to be, now that they are at the bottom of the Pacific, and third worst in the West.  But given I think the last two wins against Chicago and Dallas were more of the lucky variety, I will certainly digest last night’s win with relish (ok, pun intended).  The Sharks beat Jiggy early and often, and staked themselves to a 5-0 lead before they took their foot off of the gas a bit.  It would have been nice to have a 5 goal lead going into the third; I admit a trace of doubt crept in when the Ducks scored a goal late in the second- that’s the kind of thing teams can build on.

One reason I thought the Sharks would press for another goal is Marleau had two already.  Lots of times I’ve seen a team make utterly ridiculous plays trying to get a guy a hat trick.  But last night, I can’t remember a decent hat trick chance.  This despite Ryan Getzlaf cutting himself with his own skate and leaving the game.  I guess they all try and pitch in when Pronger is gone.

Now that the ship has been officially righted, winning four in a row, the Sharks face this week arguably the toughest opponent in the NHL right now- the Washington Capitals.  This after a Monday night game against the resident pain in the ass Phoenix Coyotes.  Doug is back in town, so we will be attending and reporting on all the great games in the next seven days, complete with bonus material – a report on the Stockton Thunder game Tuesday night against Bakersfield.  I expect some good old fashioned minor league hockey, with die hard fans, cheap tickets, and some knuckle chucking.

Also tune in tonight to ChompTalk on KDOW 1220AM (or stream it) at 9pm- Chetan and I will be talking to the radio voice of the Sharks, Dan Rusanowsky.