DOH 465 – Lighting Win, Sharks at Crossroads
July 13th, 2021, 1:37 pm
Mike wins the Vegas bet, and there are two important events for the Sharks in the next couple of weeks- the Kraken expansion draft and the amateur draft. What will the Sharks do?
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Parise was bad and definitely not a top player for the Wild. He’d been healthy scratched. He makes sense, I can’t figure out the Suter thing, he’s still a good player for them, the consensus seems to be they were afraid he’d get worse fast and they didn’t want a worse cap recapture issue if he retired in a year or something weird.
As far as buying out Sharks, the only ones I would consider buying out are Jones and Vlassic and I’m iffy on Vlassic. As bad as contracts might be for other players they still aren’t bad players and what you can replace them with over the length of the buyout penalty isn’t going to be better than them.
The culture stuff I just don’t care about and it feels like everyone reaching to find any answer other than Jones can’t stop a god damn puck. The Sharks are bad, but they’re not as awful as they look, give them replacement level goaltending and they may have a shot at the playoffs in this terrible division (where they will be promptly murdered)
Buy out Jones, send him to the Barracuda, bring in a damn Zamboni driver to replace him, dear god, anything to get him out of the net for the Sharks…
Or leave him there and bank picks because you will restock those cupboards *fast*.
I always appreciate your takes even if I don’t agree with them. I hope you are right about the culture stuff because there is a 90%+ chance in my estimation that the Sharks are going to go that direction. We will see Burns, Vlasic (who definitely has been a bad player for the last two years, make no mistake, worst among Sharks D-men in Corsi in 2019-2020 and only ahead of Pashichuk, Jaros and Middleton last season), EK9, EK65, Hertl, and Logan as the core for quite a while. A replacement level goaltender would perhaps put the Sharks in a marginal playoff position in a weak division, but will still be several steps away from any sort of Cup contention, with no cap flexibility to add. I would not consider a borderline team for the next 5 years any sort of success to be proud of.
I think we agree more than you think. I’m with you that the next 5 years will probably be rough, we don’t have any top tier talent, despite paying EK65 like one, and we’re paying old bad players like they’re young good players. Oh, and we have the most atrocious goaltending the league has seen in the last decade.
As far as the culture stuff I firmly believe that this is a product of losing, not the other way around. Bad teams are perceived to have bad culture, good teams are perceived to have good culture. When a team wins everyone is happy, playing games, goofing off, it’s a blast no matter who is a jackass on occasion. When you’re a team that expects to win and doesn’t you will have a lot of highly competitive people get very irritable very fast and look to blame people. that’s when tensions start and maybe EK has some flaws that easily grate if you are in a state of mind to be upset.
I think I disagree that the culture was so great under Jumbo and Pavs. Here is an article from 2015 where Couture is complaining about the team culture.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/04/15/sharks-couture-coaching-change-not-needed-but-team-culture-not-great/
another from 2011 (apologies for Bleacher Report cite)
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/719137-san-jose-sharks-3-ways-the-culture-in-san-jose-must-change
And one praising the culture after a gritty win in 2019 (a team with the EK’s already on it!)
https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/sharks-enviable-culture-display-impressive-win-jets/?fbclid=IwAR3XIsZaVBqJv_aDYEUea-yVsGTZ24N8NUaIzXqL97g6kWxKgcuF-HRNVP4
And that’s just 5 min on the google machine. Agree with Pericouusducks, in the end, the “core” has had great culture when they won and bad culture when they lose. IMO, losing Pavs and Jumbo has been greatly blown out of proportion when compared to how poor Jones has been, Vlasic’s/EK65’s falloff, and LaBanc’s/Meier’s stagnation. As a positive, you can squint and see a lot of that being fixable… but probably not.
The Couture quote from 2015 has been bouncing around my brain ever since I first heard it. I’m beginning to get the idea that he was the one on the outs. That HE wasn’t getting along. I’ve heard lots of stories about the elder sharks and who did what together post-game, during the all-star break or the off-season and I can’t ever recall hearing about Couture socializing with any other sharks.
I dunno… one day SOMEONE will write a book revealing all – I just hope I’m still around to read it.
such a great episode. thanks dudes. more please.
i’m still in the dw-is-no-longer-the-guy camp. there are ways to break up a team, get guys off the roster. putting a band-aid on it and trying to limp to a first round exist in a best case scenario is a bad idea. but that’s clearly the direction we’re headed in.
if i absolutely had to keep the core together, i’d give up anything (except the 7th overall pick) to get burns off to seattle and then find a weak deal to trade kane. someone would take him with a better culture and in need of a 25-30 goal scorer. just losing those two, so you only have 1 offensive dman and kane’s negative energy is gone, would make a big difference. and then of course, buy out jones and get a real goalie.
donato is one of the 2-3 players on this roster i like. so i assume dw will expose him.
Thanks James. I unfortunately share your nihilistic outlook (for now). Donato seems useful, so why keep him?
i am pleased at the addition of hill, though giving up a second is a lot for a backup goalie on a non-playoff team. my hope is the sharks get another goalie and they go with the tandem idea, riding the hot hand. i’m definitely afraid the sharks will keep jones and let them battle for the starts. jones has to go, period.
The list of expensive, talented players available to Seattle is crazy. It seems like NHL teams are trying to avoid what exactly happened to the Sharks: overvaluing big name players at the end of their prime or past it. By going for Hill, Wilson also went after a low cost option, rather than picking up a veteran goalie that would be much more expensive. If Seattle doesn’t take him, maybe Wilson will splurge on Gourde for that 3rd line center.
i love that sakic chose to expose landeskog. of course the avs would love to keep him, but if he really is asking for $9-10 mil that’s too much. these are the kinds of hardball decisions dw seems incapable of making. dw would hand him $10 mil / 8 years lol.
Great that the Sharks have a bona fide blue chip prospect in Eklund. The Hill pickup makes sense, though I really hope he gets much less salary and term than what Driedger got from Seattle. But I have to agree with Kurz’ tweets that so far this is not enough to make the Sharks competitive. I feel like they are publicly talking playoffs but privately accepting this will be another year of losing. If they do keep Jones as backup, they’re hoping he can rebuild a little of his rep and then unload him without a buy out. They might even be tanking in the hope that players like Kane or Karlsson ask to be traded. Next year they will come back with significant changes to clear way for guys like Eklund, Merkeley, Weisblatt.
Well, I don’t hate any of the UFA signings so I count that as a good day.
No changes to the core except Jones? Surprised. Could be DW tried by other NHL teams weren’t that interested in SJ’s roster.
The Pacific is so weak this year, SJ might just make the playoffs. But this is not a good team. I don’t think they”d be in the mix for a playoff spot in any other division.
The good news is, only 6 years and $69 mil left on EK65’s contract. (What does one do with that kind of money!?!)