The Sharks are once again one of the best teams in hockey so far but only time will tell if they are a real playoff contender.
EDMONTON - So you're one of those guys who got burned by the San Jose Sharks in your playoff pool again last spring. You vowed to never again get suckered in by a team that could look so good, yet choke sooo badly every year.
But now it's January. Joe Thornton is a top-10 scorer again, and Patrick Marleau is right on his tail. Dan Boyle has been around the top of the defenceman-scoring charts all season and even Rob Blake - who was once a rookie on a Kings blue-line that sported Barry Beck and Larry Robinson - has more points than Scott Niedermayer.
You're going to lose the regular-season pool to some doofus who only figured out that the Sharks had a good team this October, when you'd been riding them for the past three years. And now you're starting to waiver on your New Year's resolution to never, ever try and ride the Sharks to that big playoff payday.
Maybe this is their year? Maybe this is the spring they'll recoup for you all those past entry fees that have been burned on losses to Calgary, Edmonton, and Detroit.
It's like Charlie Brown and the football, isn't it? Could this finally be the year that Lucy leaves it on the tee in the Silicon Valley?
"Well, I like the improvements we've made on the back end," a cautious Joe Thornton said. "A different system, and the commitment to play it…"
You can hear former Sharks coach Ron Wilson wince all the way from Toronto when these players, who have been world-beaters for the past few regular seasons and world-class underachievers come playoff time, talk about how much better "the system" is now.
That is player speak for "The coaching is better."
What rookie head coach Todd McLellan has found in San Jose however, is a very attentive roster. He walked out the door after three years as an assistant coach in Detroit, where they have clearly figured out how to go all the way, and into a Sharks dressing room that is dying to know the secret.
Receptive? Ya think?
"Absolutely," McLellan said Friday morning in Edmonton. "You can talk about winning, but going through the trials and tribulations that we went through in Detroit… It wasn't always easy.
"There are no more dominant personalities than there are in that group in Detroit, and I watched Mike Babcock handle that. The players here, they've allowed us to present new ideas."
They could have called this team the Tiger Sharks up 'til now, because they play like Sharks all season, then like the (Detroit) Tigers come spring. They have, however, never been able to look back at their blue-line and see the likes of Boyle and Blake.
This was a team that always relied on a Matt Carle or Scott Hannan for its puck movement, and has now upgraded to Boyle. The Mike Rathjes and Kyle McLarens are no longer here, and they've been replaced by Blake, a respected veteran who is better than both of the aforementioned players lumped together.
Boyle and Blake each have Stanley Cup rings, and another quiet but solid acquisition on the third pairing - Brad Lukowich - adds two more.
"We have not had that [kind of a defence] in the past," Thornton said. "We do now."
So this, it turns out, is the reason God made bookies.
Are the Sharks just like a good pot of chili, having simmered long enough now that they are table ready as a championship team? Because if it is true that you learn more from losing than winning (at least in the playoffs), there can be no wiser organization in the National Hockey League than this one.
Do you bet that McLellan can take that experience from Detroit and parlay it into success in wine country? Is this a case of a new message simply being a good message, after Wilson had run his course in San Jose?
"I don't know why you wouldn't want to try and play like the Detroit Red Wings," Thornton said. "They've been the team to beat for five or six years now."
At this point, it seems absurd to consider a Western Conference final involving anyone else but those two clubs.
And won't that be a series to see?
