Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Inaugural Post: Cliffs of Despair

Here before us lies the monumental precipice of disappointment and radical change.

It’s among these mixed emotions that I launch the inaugural post of the “Puck Sharks Blog” this blog’s “mission” is to provide an inside, opinionated and unbiased view of the National Hockey League’s San Jose Sharks.

First I would like to make mention of the inspiration for this blog, Jeff Marek (of Roger’s Sports Network), Greg Wyshynski (of Yahoo! Sports and NBC), the “Puck Daddy” staff , the "Dudes on Hockey" podcast and my girlfriend who have all helped spark the creative embers in myself. I can still recall Jeff Marek’s voice saying “Go out there and start a blog or podcast! Get your voice heard because the only way we can grow hockey is by getting it to places it has never been.”

So with all that being said I would like to introduce myself, my name is Erik Landi. I will be the man behind the computer offering up my voice to the masses and hopefully in the future will have an expanded offering of media from across various sources. In addition, I would like to set up a comment section for fan reaction and input, so you the reader can have your voice heard as well.

On to the meat of this post, as you may have guessed from this ominous opening message I witnessed the utter collapse of the San Jose Sharks in round 1 of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs. By now we all have heard ad nauseam how historic this comeback by the Los Angeles Kings was and that the “choker” label is well deserved by the Sharks. However, diving a little deeper into this series I have come to realize a few things from my vantage point.
  1. The defensive systems of the Sharks failed to properly adapt to the King’s offensive zone forecheck and zone entries during the last 5 games (and even during spurts in games 1 and 2). Another problem I found very strange stemming from the d-corps was the “light” play in front of the goal crease, on more than one occasion the defencemen let opposing players setup in front of the goal tender and whack away at the puck until a whistle was blown. Lastly, the Sharks failed to get the puck deep on offensive zone dump-ins which directly led to inexcusable line changes, and odd men rushes.
  2. FACEOFFS, FACEOFFS, FACEOFFS! In the beginning stage of this series (games 1,2,3) the Sharks center men were strong in the faceoff dot winning key draws in the offensive and defensive zones, sans James Sheppard who looked awful all series. During the games later in the series the Sharks top faceoff men (I’m looking at you Joe Pavelski, Joe Thornton, and Logan Couture) continually lost faceoffs to the point where it seemed like injuries were playing a factor, something was just not right with these guys. The Sharks by the way were tied for the second best faceoff percentage in the regular season and ended in 9th place during the playoffs.
  3. Last but certainly not least was the deployment of lines\personal in the entire series was horrendous. For the last year and a half the management\coaching staff had preached about rolling 4 lines with center depth. Earlier in this season Todd Mclellan iced lines that included Tomas Hertl/Joe Thornton/Brent Burns, Patrick Marleau/Logan Couture/Martin Havlat (when healthy), Tommy Wingles/Joe Pavelski/Matt Neito and Mike Brown/Andrew Desjardin/Tyler Kennedy. When these lines stayed relatively intact the team was at its deadliest, flaunting speed, Puck Skills and a physical nature. With the return of Raffi Torres and Adam Burish some extra nastiness was injected into the high tempo game the Sharks wanted to employ.Why was the formula continually changing during the series? Specifically Pavelski being flipped around lines, Havlat being inserted in such a physical series and keeping Raffi on the fourth line. Not forgetting to mention the goalie flip flop.
In conclusion I suspect we will hear about multiple injuries in the lineup and guys not fully recovering from injuries because this team looked remarkably weaker as the series progressed. In following posts I will dissect individual facets of this Sharks team that led to the collapse we saw and propose fixes which may surprise some.

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