With Vlasic in the lineup, we’d have fewer shots against.

But our forward crop has been relatively healthy. In a game like Toronto, there’s no reason they should be outshooting or outskating us.

Our problems on D have just as much to do with backchecking as a lack of a Jan Hejda or whoever else we might trade for.

This particular stretch of 9 games is nice in that we did it without Boyle and Vlasic for the most part, but the overall trend is not terribly different from other stretches of this season.

The sky isn’t falling, and the team HAS won 7 of 9 without essentially 50 of it’s regular 120 minutes of D in Vlasic and Boyle.

But in this stretch of 9 games, I basically have not seen a Stanley Cup winner. For stretches lasting longer than 2-3 games this season, I’m not sure I have.

It’s one thing to beat Calgary 9-1. It’s another thing to keep up THAT level of play.

Maybe the team has it. I don’t know.

Against Toronto.

Jody Shelley pretty much cleans Colton Orr’s clock. Toronto scores soon after.

Later in the game, Toronto is pressing. Dany Heatley runs a bit of goaltender interference that isn’t called. Giguere is almost immediately talking to a ref about it.

A scant few shifts later, Dion Phaneuf RUNS Jody Shelley on a clearly missed boarding call. Jody is cut open and doesn’t take too kindly to the hit. He stands up for himself. He’s assessed a minor.

No one on the bench seemed to react to this. No one on the ice reacted to it. Toronto scored barely 30 seconds in to their power play.

We won that game, yes. But one of our guys was basically bleeding on the ice and no one got upset. Dion Phaneuf was untouched the rest of the night.

Granted, we were probably trying to win, but making Dion pay for that hit is not outside of winning the game. No one dumped the puck in on him and them went after him (which you on occasion have to do in this league to win).

That is a SOFT response to a dirty hit. I don’t care if you’re travelling, I don’t care if the Leafs suck, I don’t care if it’s usually Shelley’s job to do the standing up in a situation like that. There was a dirty play that put one of OUR guys in harms way. And basically, the response was to give up a goal.

I see things like that, and I’m very skeptical about this team making any kind of noise down the road, not unless there is a serious attitude shift. There are plenty of guys on this team who care. They have shown it at various times. A ton of guys have dropped the gloves or made big plays. It’s rare that EVERYONE is going all at the same time.

People have criticized Joe for floating in some games. He has. But for a majority of games, he’s also carried this team offensively, on nights where basically only the top line came to play and the bottom 3 were mostly ineffective.

We need more nights where all four lines, even if they aren’t putting points up, are at least contributing emotionally.

Also, I’m curious how much of the time in these games we’ve been ahead, teams tend to put up more shots when they’re trying to get back into a game.

We were outshot in the first period of each of those 9 games save two – against Detroit and Los Angeles. In those games, we outshot them in the first period, but they came back to outshoot us in the second and third.

We also gave up the first goal in 5 of the 9 games – the exceptions were L.A., Anaheim, St. Louis, and Detroit.

Very good perspective-I didn’t even look at it that way. We’ve definitely pulled out a win in a variety of different ways, and that’s encouraging for sure.

LA and Buffalo were big games. The Chicago game might be a moral victory, but I’m more concerned with the fact that, for a game we KNEW was going to be big, without the media making a big deal of it, we came out flat. Giving up goals in bunches too. Detroit was a bad night for the refs, and a worse night for us. But that always seems to happen. In the case of those two games, I’m more troubled by a “more of the same” deal than trying to break anything else down.

Someone said after the Chicago loss “Oh well, just another meaningless regular season loss. Time to move on.” That’s fine. But it sortuv applies to the wins too. Again, BECAUSE we’re a frontrunner, we’re going to win a lot of games. It’s gotten to the point for me where, if you win a game against the Blues, or the Wild, it’s very much “Oh well, just another meaningless regular season win.” It’s hard to get enthusiastic about them because, well, dead horses and playoffs and yadda yadda yadda.

Our team is 7-1-1 in it’s last nine. That’s freaking amazing, especially considering the injuries on the blue line.

Do I see a 7-2 stretch like this happening in the playoffs just yet? Absolutely not. Especially not with the stretches of play this team has gone through DURING that stretch. I don’t see us getting outshot in 9 straight playoff games and winning 7 of them. And, if you have to play the same team more than once, I don’t see us playing a game like in Chicago, where you dig yourself a hole, and then have to climb out of it, only to come up short in sudden death OT, to be conducive to then winning more games than the other guys over the rest of the series.

Again, I think we’ve seen these Sharks before. Month of March 2008 after the Brian Campbell trade anyone? How about the spring run the year of the Thornton trade to just MAKE the playoffs. Yes, this is a different team, but absent more dominating performances and more consistent effort levels, I’m skeptical.

The Ducks were outshot in 13 strait playoff games last year.

Just saying.

I kind of agree, but the lack of consistency just scares me. It’s annoying that no matter who we’re playing, i can never really say to myself “ohhh shit, we’re gonna destroy these guys. I can’t wait to see how many goals we score.”

And Detroit really has had our number all season long, we can’t seem to get any real offense going against them for some reason. Yeah we had some injuries last game against them but Detroit has had injuries all season long and they’ve whooped us all season long. I’m actually not that worried about Chicago, although i can’t really put into words why, I just think we can beat them assuming Nabby plays as well as he has been.

I hope you’re not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is dairy