The Sharks blow a 3rd period leave and exit the playoffs earlier than they ever have, in 5 games.  Mike and Doug provide a instant reaction to the Sharks’ disappointing season, along with knee-jerk reactions about what might happen next.

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The Sharks win game 1 in double OT, but get beat fairly badly in St. Louis in game 2.  But the Sharks have home ice for games 3 and 4, so Mike and Doug talk about the keys to winning those games.  Also, there is so much good hockey going on, and other Round 1 stories to talk about.

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The Sharks have made it into the playoff by winning their last four games, the two against the Kings in a wildly entertaining fashion.  But now they face the Blues in the first round, without beating them all year.

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After three good wins, the Sharks manage to lose two critical road games to Anaheim and Phoenix, and they are back out of the playoff picture.  We can go over what they did wrong, how Mike Smith is the second coming of Ken Dryden or whatever, but the fact is this:  if the Sharks can’t beat Dallas and L.A. for the next four games, they don’t deserve to be in the playoffs anyway.  Should they manage to limp in without winning those four games, they will almost certainly get crushed by whomever they face in the first round, playing either St. Louis or Vancouver with no home ice.

Doug and Mike talk about the last three games, all of which the Sharks won, and go over the current playoff picture.  Also, Mike recounts his experience as a fantasy camper at the Shark for a Day event.

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After two terrible games against division opponents this week, the Sharks staunch the bleeding somewhat by edging the defending champs, the Bruins, 2-1.  Just when you think the Sharks are ready to give up the ghost, they come back like a Monty Python sketch.  “But I don’t want to go in the cart!  I’m not dead.”

There are still several signs that are very troubling about this team, mostly in the scoring department.  The last time the Sharks won a game by more than one goal was five weeks ago, against the Caps (thanks Kevin Kurz).  That’s also the last time the Sharks have scored more than three goals in a win.  The last time they scored more than three goals period was also five weeks ago, in a 6-5 loss in OT to the Lightning.  That’s 18 games ago, almost a quarter of the season.  In those 18 games where the Sharks didn’t score more than three, they scored three goals (supposedly the magic number) only four times.  Let’s put that a different context.  In the 55 games previous to that, the Sharks scored 3 or more goals 33 times, or 60% of the time.  That doesn’t include wins like 2-1, 2-0, etc.  Since, the Sharks have scored three or more goals only 22% of the time.  That’s not a decline.  That’s an anvil falling out of the sky.

The good thing about last night is they stayed step for step with the Stanley Cup Champions, and the 4th line was more than just a non-liability.  They were an asset, matching up well with the Bruins very respectable fourth line of Dan Paille, Shawn Thornton and Greg Campbell.  The bad thing is the Sharks still are not scoring in bunches.  They score once, have some good quality chances not go in, then slowly fade.  Whether they hold on or chip in another one seems to be a coin flip at best.  Looking at the stat sheet, another bad thing was the return of Michal Hanzus.  He was -1, and lost 5 of the 7 faceoffs he took.  T.J. Galiardi can’t come back fast enough.

There’s no more time for the Sharks to turn this around.  They have to be going in the right direction now.  Another game or two of disappointing losses will put them in an ugly position to make the playoffs.  Let’s hope the win against Boston was the turn, and now the Sharks are sailing in clear waters and strong wind to the finish line.

Mike and Doug talk about the efficacy of the sacrifice, and the lack of efficacy against the Ducks.

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The Sharks have thirteen games to play, and 78 points.  Here’s the point totals of the 8 seed every year since the lockout.

For the math nerds, the West average is 94.17, East is 92, overall average is 93.08, and standard deviation is 2.5.  The conventional wisdom is that the Sharks need 95 points to make the playoffs, and these numbers support that.  However, assuming the distribution is normal, there’s about a 15% chance the 8 seed will need 97 points to make it.

To get to 94 points, the Sharks need to go 8-5-0, or 7-3-2.  To get to 95 points, that’s 8-4-1 or 7-2-3.  To get to 97, that’s 9-3-1 or 8-1-3.

The last time the Sharks got 16 points or more in a 13-game span was January 5th to February 2nd, which included 8 games against teams that are not currently in the playoffs.  The final thirteen, the Sharks will have 6 games against such opponents, and three of them against the Kings, with whom the Sharks are tied.

Ain’t gonna be easy.

Here we are, in all of our glory, with some of our esteemed colleagues.

For those of you that wanted to hear some ‘real’ opinions (or as real as DOH can get), try that on for size.

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