At this point, you have to set the over-under at 70 games. The San Jose Sharks are the most balanced team I’ve ever seen, from the top line right through to the goaltender. They dominate entire games, pounding the opposition with a perfect mix of speed, skill and physicality. Joe Thornton has morphed into the player Beantown always wanted him to be. Devin Setoguchi is getting better by the minute. Dan Boyle looks like a $40 million steal.
Spend enough time with the Center Ice Package and you’ll see several bad hockey teams, clubs that can’t move the puck from their own end and have no clue what to do with the puck once they cross the blueline. After a few games, you might start to think hockey is just a game of luck, with each game decided by a couple bounces or a hot goaltender. Then you watch the Sharks play and realize what hockey is supposed to look like.
I can’t imagine how the Sharks will lose consecutive regulation games this season. It would take a couple off nights, combined with a red-hot goalie at the other end and the opposition playing its best game. After watching every Sharks game, I’m becoming a little offended that nobody outside the Bay Area realizes just how good this team is. Even those little remarks commentators make are beginning to irk me. I was watching the New York Rangers play the other day, and the color guy said, “When they’re skating, they’re as good as any team in the league.” Nope. Not the Sharks. Not even close.
San Jose is 20-3-1 through the first 24 games of the season, ripping teams apart and wearing them down with steady pressure. They tore through the Penguins and Red Wings as easily as tissue paper. They clobbered the Stars like a fat kid smashing an overstuffed piñata. So, with all this bashing and smashing going on you have to ask: Does the regular season really matter? I’m going to answer the question three different ways, so follow along closely.
1) No. In the overall scheme of things, the regular season record doesn’t really matter. Barring a Van de Velde-ian collapse the Sharks will make the playoffs and earn home-ice advantage. They might even set a few records and clinch a President’s Trophy in the process. However, if the regular season success doesn’t translate to playoff success it doesn’t matter at all.
If the Sharks suffer another second-round collapse that President’s Trophy banner is going to hang as a glaring reminder of the team’s failure. Expectations have been high in San Jose for several years, but the team’s recently play has elevated them even further. With the start they’ve had, anything short of a Stanley Cup victory is going to be a failure. So no, a 70-win regular season won’t matter at all if everything comes apart in May.
2) Yes. Second-line center and future captain Joe Pavelski said it best a couple weeks ago: “It’s very important, because we’re learning how to win right now for that time. We’ve struggled in the playoffs the last couple years so it’s good to have some early success, but you’ve still gotta play every game and it’s nice to get off to a good start. We’ll take the next 20 games and from there we’ll re-evaluate based on our work ethic and performance.”
When I was going to school at the University of Utah, I had the option of “testing out” of a political science class. I was able to take the test before attending a single class, and if I scored higher than 80 percent I would get credit for the class without having to endure the entire course load. I figured I could do it. I mean, I had scored high on the SAT and I did pretty well at Jeopardy! so how hard could it be? I swear, that test might as well have been written in Arabic. After about 15 minutes I quit, figuring I couldn’t have scored much higher than 8 percent.
The Sharks haven’t had any success yet, and while everyone’s throwing rose petals at Todd McLellan’s feet he hasn’t achieved anything more than Ron Wilson did. In previous seasons, the Sharks had regular season success but didn’t learn the entire course load. They proceeded into the final exam and fell on their faces. Of course the regular season matters, because it’s preparing the squad for those playoff trials they’re sure to encounter. And we all know there aren’t any shortcuts to the Stanley Cup.
3) Absolutely. The regular season matters because it gives Sharks fans another five months to fire up the bandwagon and generate some buzz around this team before the playoffs begin. Start spreading the news people. Tell a co-worker to check out the game tomorrow night. This is the time to convert the masses, because there isn’t a better team or time to introduce people to the sport of hockey.
Hockey is a game people just have to see live, so bring a friend or family member with you to see a game and get as many people to the rink as you can. The regular season is perfect because it lets people come to a game before the playoff frenzy, when HP Pavilion sells out in 17 seconds and lower bowl tickets cost you a kidney. The Sharks are an incredible team, so start growing the game and spreading the news here in the Bay Area. Jam up the radio lines, e-mail the newspaper sports editors, and demand more from your Hockeybuzz bloggers.
If the Leafs were on pace for 70 wins it would be the biggest thing since Princess Diana’s funeral. People would hold candlelight vigils outside the ACC, laying flowers down around the entire building and erecting huge murals to Anton Stralman and Nikolai Kulemin. Why should San Jose be any different?
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