Now what?
Having thoroughly dominated the Colorado Avalanche through 60 minutes only to lose 1-0 on a heartbreaker of a fluke goal in overtime, the San Jose Sharks can feel the noose tightening around their necks.
Despite the fact there were no goals in regulation, Sunday night’s San Jose-Colorado tilt really was spellbinding theatre.
You had the carefully constructed Sharks with their high-priced, high-profile superstars basically playing keep-away with the puck, out-shooting their hosts 50-16, with only the superb play of Avalanche goaltender Craig Anderson preventing it from being an absolute route.
At one point, the Sharks held the Avalanche without a shot for more than 20 minutes. It seemed like only a matter of time before poor Anderson ran out of gas and surrendered a goal that would send the enthusiastic packed house of 18,007 at the Pepsi Center home disappointed.
Of course, in the back of your mind, you couldn’t help but remember it was the Sharks, not the Detroit Red Wings or Pittsburgh Penguins, who were controlling the play without scoring. As scoring chance after scoring chance evaporated, you had to wonder if the hockey Gods weren’t up to their old tricks where the Sharks are concerned.
The answer came 51 seconds into overtime when veteran defenceman Dan Boyle, who tasted playoff success with the Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning in 2003-04 and helped Team Canada win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, appeared to shoot the puck into his own net.
In fact, his attempt to direct the puck behind his own net to avoid checker Ryan O’Reilly, actually glanced off O’Reilly’s stick and slipped past a startled Evgeni Nabokov on the short side.
And with that, the Sharks find themselves in a very familiar position of being the top seed in the Western Conference and yet trailing in the first round of playoffs.
I am absolutely certain there are thousands of Sharks fans thinking to themselves, ‘Here we go again.’
And why not?
It’s not as if they haven’t been down this road before. Why, it was only last year that San Jose finished first in the Western Conference before being sent home in the first round by the eighth-seed Anaheim Ducks. That wound has barely healed and here they are again, trailing to an eighth seed in the playoffs.
Now we’ll see what the Sharks are made of.
The fact of the matter is they should have won Game 3. So the loss either serves as the greatest wakeup call of all-time (OK, maybe that’s a little overstated) or the beginning of the end of the organization as we know it.
It’s not as though a 2-1 deficit is insurmountable. For the Sharks to win, however, three things must happen:
1. Joe Thornton needs to wake up
In three games he has just two assists and is minus-2. For too long the media, myself included, has treated this guy with kid gloves. Because he’s a happy-go-lucky guy and very co-operative, Thornton gets cut a break for his disappointing play when the reality of the situation is, he’s a chronic underachiever at crunch time.
Sunday night in Colorado Thornton ate up 21:45 of ice time, second among Sharks forwards behind only Patrick Marleau, but was mostly ineffective. Typically, Thornton patrolled the perimeter in the offensive zone, letting others do the dirty work in front of the net. For a guy who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 235 pounds, this is unforgivable.
Manny Malhotra, a low-scoring checker throughout his career, outplayed Thornton and generated more scoring chances for his team. When that happens, you know the Sharks are in trouble.
Thornton was merely a passenger on Canada’s gold medal-winning team at the Olympics and he has contributed zip to the Sharks in this year’s playoffs. If this was a one-off, you might let it slide. But his poor play in the playoffs is a continuation of a script that seems to be written in stone.
I thought Thornton was unjustly criticized for poor play in the playoffs with the Boston Bruins when he soldiered on despite a serious rib injury, but unless he is hiding a serious injury now, which I sincerely doubt, there is no excuse for his lackluster performance. While other stars ratchet it up in the playoffs, the air seems to come out of Thornton’s game.
For the Sharks to advance beyond the first round, that must change immediately.
2. Evgeni Nabokov must save the day.
Like Thornton, the Sharks goaltender is best known for his regular season glory followed by post-season misery. I wouldn’t go so far as to blame the winning goal in Game 3 on Nabokov, but if he had been clinging to his post as described in Chapter 1 of the Book of Goaltending Basics, the puck would never have gone in.
3. Rob Blake must continue to lead.
The 40-year-old veteran was the best player on the ice in Game 3 and is supplying the Sharks with the kind of inspirational play and leadership they were looking for when they transferred the captain’s ‘C’ to his jersey from Marleau’s prior to the start of the season.
Blake knows what it takes to be a champion and if he is able to influence his younger teammates, San Jose just might stand a chance of meeting its potential.
The Sharks are not done. Not by a long shot. But if they don’t get their act together, they soon will be.
