marleau played all of last season with pavelski and clowe, he’ll still get his chances to score on that line.

You can only make a point so many times before you start to drive yourself mad, and being a lonely twenty something year old who eats Pop Tarts for dinner, I have enough to be mad about.

haha

Great piece-I think our lack of depth scoring and lack of depth on the blueline are both glaring and very serious issues. However, the lion’s share of the media and blogosphere have largely ignored these issues all season; no doubt the presence of 3 superstars on the same line and the level of production with regard to goals, points, and wins by these 3 has overshadowed these issues for the hockey community as a whole. I’m also a fervent proponent of breaking up HTML at least part-time, and now’s a good a time as any to start trying it out on a regular basis again. I, for one, would love to see Seto return to the disgusting level of production we saw last season and I agree that Papa Joe is the catalyst. The ‘Hawks just plain scare me, and I’m sure I’m not alone. In many ways (with the exception of goaltending), I consider the current squad the archetype of a Stanley Cup contender.

One point that I don’t completely agree with is that we need a bit more offensive overhauling. Well, I agree to a point. We know that most of the players on our 2nd and even 3rd lines have the ability to score, most notably the entire 2nd line; it’s just a matter of finding that Papa Joe-type catalyst, which I agree Marleau can surely provide on the 2nd line. The 4th line is where I see the most problems-I agree Staubitz isn’t making the impact (yet) that he was last season. I’m a big fan of McClaren-he can produce offensively, and dear god is he a beast. He’s young, he can actually hold his own with the league’s largest human beings (read: Parros), and I really like the energy he brings to the line. Hunt’s mid-season grade for McClaren doesn’t make sense to me. As for the 3rd line, they don’t lack in effort whatsoever. That line is just insane, Nichol and Malhotra in particular. I wish they’d produce a little more offensively, but I see them as largely a role-playing line (winning faceoffs, forechecking the shit out of opponents, and winning races to loose pucks).

East coast and Canadian hockey fans love to criticize Sharks fans, hell, west coast hockey fans in general, calling us ignorant, uninformed, and merely fans of a single team rather than of the sport as a whole (the latter being utterly an utterly retarded assertion, if you ask me). I think this blog and several other excellent Western Conference-focused blogs I frequent make our accusers look like a bunch of schmucks.

I have faith that DW, being the powerful Jedi master that he is, will continue to perform miracles. Well, he has until March 3rd to do so.

I’m not as worried about the scoring depth in terms of the talent we already have. The guys we have SHOULD be scoring more, its just a matter of getting them to do so. And, I agree, swapping Marleau and Setoguci would probably be a good start. I also think getting together a consistant 3rd line of Malhotra-Nichol-Ortmeyer would help too…as whenever those guys are together, they are ridiculously high energy, great on the forecheck, and pretty good at creating scoring chances of their own.

That third line I listed in particular could be the line that helps us the most in the postseason. Any one of those three guys, with the way they have been playing, could end up being the Talbot (PIT 09) or Moen (ANA 07) that is key to helping a team go far (breakout playoffs where someone off the bottom lines goes off and scores like 8-10 goals in the playoffs out of nowhere…usually a high energy guy). I mean, regardless of how much of our offense is going to come from the likes of Marleau and Heatley…if we don’t have that lower line guy step up and chip in unexpected goals, we probably aren’t going to do well anyways. You really can’t have a Canada-like lineup in terms of scoring, so other people are going to have to step up. And I think we have the pieces that could do just that. Hell, even a 4th line of McGinn-Mitchell-McLaren/Couture (depending on who we are playing and if we want an enforcer type), could make some waves. We have the pieces, they just need to effing do their job. No amount of tweeking will ever change that fact.

Of course, we’ll need our big guns scoring too. Who’s led the playoffs in scoring the last few years? Crosby, Malkin, Datsyuk, Zetterberg…the stars. Yes, they’ll face defensive pressure. But we’ll still need them to produce. Which is why I’m not too worried that we’re seeing Marleau and Heatley scoring a bunch right now. We’ll need them too. The other guys just need to wake up and compliment that better. Which, as I’ve said, I think they can.

Finally, the blueline needs to be bolstered defensively (we’re good on puck movers). And having D-men you can count on to shut things down down-low will allow the forwards to be able to press a little more, and could create more scoring chances across the board, too.

Plank’s terrific article made the front page at NHL.com.

Let’s all thank our lucky stars that he is a 20 year old eating pop-tarts for dinner. If he had a life, then we wouldn’t get to bask in his greatness.

Keep on truckin’, partner.

Slightly off topic, but another article I found interesting regarding points and pennies:
NHL Player Cost per Point

The Thrashers Rich Peverley tops the list as the player that provides the most bang for your buck. The Sharks show up at #45 with Manny Malhotra: 14pts and a cap hit of $700,000 = $50,000/point. The only other SJ player that breaks the top-100 is Ortmeyer.

140: McLaren, cap $543,000 + 6pts = $90,500/point
233: Staubitz, cap $500,000 + 4pts = $125,000/point

Secondary scoring is what buried the Sharks last year in the playoffs. Nabokov’s five hole didn’t help.

remember this vividly…or not..i was sloshed

The Sharks do not even have to alter their team drastically if they go with Marleau-Thornton-Heatley, Clowe-Pavelski-Setoguchi, Malhotra-Nichol-Ortmeyer, McGinn-Mitchell-(Couture)-McLaren. That gives SJ two scoring lines, a solid checking line, and a fourth line with some size and speed.

Setoguchi and Mitchell are the two players that are underperforming most noticeably on the ice, Seto is not getting his shot off and not getting to open areas, Mitchell has not regained his speed and maneuverability. Clowe-Pavelski are adapting to the loss of Michalek, and Setoguchi has struggled to fill that role, but if he simplifies his game and drives the net he can still be a factor. Mitchell is looking small, and with slow wide turns he has not been as effective on the forecheck. Based on past history, I do not think you can pencil him in for a much larger offensive role.

So do the Sharks shore up the defense with limited cap room at the trade deadline, hold the status quo, or bring in 1-2 guys from Worcester. Still too soon to tell, but the time to find out is now instead of using Staubitz and Shelley regularly in my opinion. You have to be able to get goals from all 4 forward lines, right now that is not the case.

East coast and Canadian hockey fans love to criticize Sharks fans, hell, west coast hockey fans in general, calling us ignorant, uninformed, and merely fans of a single team rather than of the sport as a whole

I have a story to go along with that. Whilst on vacation over Christmas, I ran into a Canadiens fan. I told him I was a fan of the Sharks after noticing his Habs hat. He was very very surprised that I knew as much as I did. He also asked if I know who Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur were and like, who doesn’t..and he was like “wow you’re really a fan!”
He even said “It’s amazing how you can have hockey in that climate.”
We talked for at least 20 minutes.
I should mention he was Canadian. I hope he went back with a better view of California hockey fans. :)