My playoff beard is better than Mike's! And Doug's, but that goes without saying.

If you asked me the chances of the Sharks taking a 3-0 lead on the Red Wings in this series, I would have put the chances of that well south of 5%.  The Wings are healthy, seasoned, and contain some of the best talent the league has to offer.  But for some reason, the ultimate chokers, the San Jose Sharks, have managed to come from behind in every single game and win.  I feel like I’m delirious.  Who put this lovely mixture of crank, LSD, and OxyContin into my breakfast cereal?  It’s FAN-tastic.

Last night was a come-from-behind to trump all others, because the Sharks were down by two goals this time, and in the third period to boot.  If you go back to our conference semis preview where Doug and I were trying to convince each other the Sharks could win, one of the things I said was “Jimmy Howard can be beat.”  If I were to pick one major problem with the Wings game, it would be that.  Yeah, there’s been some low turnovers by the Wings that have led to extended cycles and scoring chances.  But that Logan Couture goal last night, while heads-up and tricky, should not have gone in the net.  We’ve seen Nabby give up that goal before, and rightly excoriated him.  Howard, while certainly not the only reason why the Wings are in a unbelievable 3-0 hole, is not exactly baling water as fast as the others.

I do want to talk about the OT goal for a minute, because it does seem to illustrate two problems the Wings have had.  One is  Howard (series SV% = 0.886).  It’s very surprising to me that he was that far out of position when Marleau received Joe’s All-World pass.  And it was all-world: perfect timing, perfect speed for Marleau to shoot it on net, right on the tape.  Just a thing of beauty, and every bit as good as that spin-around backhand pass to Marleau that has made all of those highlight reels.  The second is the defense.  Every defensemen knows that on a 2-on-1 you keep your stick in the passing lane.  Brian Rafalski, for reasons unknown, seemed to be directing traffic, conducting a tiny invisible symphony, or maybe just trying to scratch an itch on his calf.  The blade of his stick was nowhere near the lane to Marleau.

It also perfectly illustrates something good for the Sharks – JOE THORNTON IS SHOOTING. Sakes alive, what a wonderful world we live in!  You think Rafalski would even consider taking the shooting lane if Joe hadn’t scored earlier, and hadn’t picked up his shot rate in the series? Joe averaged well under 2 shots per game in the regular season, and is over 3 shots per game in this series.  Even though he was only credited for one shot last night, which happened to be the goal, his willingness to direct the puck at the net (he took 6 shots in game two, and missed 5) is yet another reason why the Sharks are winning.

Even with all of these good things, the Sharks are still not done.  Not by a long shot.  Let’s say they take a game off, lose game 4, come home, and Detroit wins a squeaker.  That could easily happen, in which case my ass will be in full production of masonry products.  In my head, I estimated the chances of the Sharks winning the series after game two a little better than 50%.  Now, I put their chances at around 75-80%.  It ain’t over folks.  But the best thing about it is, we know the Sharks don’t think it’s over either.

New podcast will be posted tonight.

The Dudes take to the real airwaves, not just the intertubes, and record a full hour-long call in show on KDOW, 1220AM.  The Dudes break down the thrilling come-from-behind game 2 victory, what is and isn’t working for the Sharks, and much more.

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DUDES ON CHOMPTALK TONIGHT!

We’ll be taking to the airwaves from 9-10pm tonight on 1220AM KDOW to discuss what is hopefully a commanding 2-0 Sharks series lead after tonight’s Game 2 at the Tank. For our international listeners and readers and people who want to listen on the internet, you can click on this link to stream the show live.  Just like the podcast, the show revolves around questions from the listeners – so tonight give us a call at 1-800-516-1220 and talk to us live on the air.

Talk to you tonight. Go Sharks!

Guess that fish stew from the taco cart was a bad idea

With Marleau being literally a last-minute scratch (he participated in the pre-game skate), it looks as if the ghost of Ed Belfour had made a comeback, despite our masterful exorcism.  I’ll pass on a bit of a rumor, because it’s harmless- we heard it was food poisoning.  That’s from only one source, but it does jive with the official report: that it’s an “illness” and not an “injury”.

The Wings played almost exactly as expected.  Dazzling puckhandling, good defensive movement, great speed.  And luckily for us, mediocre goaltending.  The Sharks lost the even strength battle 3-2, but won the special teams battle 2-0, and that was enough to win game 1.  I wouldn’t bank on that plan for future games.  Good parts of the game had Doug and I biting our nails, wringing our hands, and puckering our… well, you get it.  It was nerve wracking.

All of this will make for a great series.  A series that I desperately want to enjoy, but will have extreme difficulty doing so.  This is great hockey, people.  Two great teams battling it out, with quite different styles.  The Sharks crash and bang, go deep in the corners, Big Joe or Clowe extract it, blast from the point and sit in Howard’s lap.  Detroit will have five guys on the ice at all times that can dangle, with behind the back passes, one-handed dekes, and open ice being created out of thin air.  It would be so great to watch if I didn’t have an ulcer.

Marleau will hopefully avoid all Sizzlers, Red Lobsters, and the Hometown Buffet, and the Sharks will get their 44 goal scorer back for game two.  One thing I mentioned to Doug as we were walking back, is the Wings have the capacity to lay a big turd in a game now and again.  The Wings were up in the series 3-2, at home, and just forgot how to play in game six.  They were down 5-1 in the third before a late goal made it a slightly more respectable 5-2.  The Sharks’ worst game of the playoffs so far was the 6-5 shootout in game two vs the Avs, which they won.  We certainly can’t count on a lapse from Detroit, but it makes me feel a little better that it’s possible.

In other news, Doug and I have entered into a wager with WingsFanInSharksLand, who happens to be a friend of ours, and despite his obvious character flaw, is actually a really good guy.  I don’t want to give away the stakes,  but let’s just say either way the series turns out, it will provide some entertainment for you all.

Game 1 at the Tank tonight. The city of San Jose doesn’t take kindly to people arriving late to an early 6pm start, so I hope the Red Wings plan it better than their Tuesday night arrival. Here’s the Dudes thoughts on the four conference semis. Chime in with your predictions as well.

Montreal (8) vs. Pittsburgh (4)
Doug: The buck has to stop somewhere and it would be mission impossible for the Canadiens to knock off both the Eastern Conference titans, right? Pittsburgh has the experience, talent and heart to overcome a little Jacques Martin mojo. Penguins in five.

Mike: Pittsburgh got a huge gift in the 6-8 seeds winning, and them not going to the Stanley Cup Finals for the third straight year would be a choke job on their part.  Pens in six, and it only goes that long because Josh Gorges PWNS.

Philadelphia (7) vs. Boston (6)
Doug: This series might have more grinding than a weekend with Wilt Chamberlin. It has the potential to be the most entertaining, if you like old school, blood and teeth cocktail hockey. I’ll be watching and as usual, Chris Pronger will still be standing at the end. Flyers in seven.

Mike: Marc Savard is back, and this emotional high will last until he skates through the middle with his head down (or up) and Pronger sticks him in the nuts.  Then cross-checks him in the head.  Then stomps on him.  Flyers in six.

Vancouver (3) vs. Chicago (2)
Doug: The dislike between these two teams is delicious. The Hawks were criticized in Round 1 for not playing with much heart, but they showed me a lot at the end of Game 5 when they refused to go down. I would love to pick Vancouver, but when have they ever made the Conf. Finals? Not since their Stanley Cup run in 1994 behind Bure and Linden. Hawks in six.

Mike: It’s disappointing to see Doug abandon his prescient observation that Chicago’s goaltending is a ticking time bomb.  I now take the reins of that bandwagon.  Canucks in seven.  Steve Bernier has 27 points in the series.

San Jose (1) vs. Detroit (5)
Doug: The path to glory has been determined and the Sharks are going to have to earn it. If ever there was a year for our boys to oust the mighty Wings, this is their best chance. We have the talent, depth and a goalie who knows he could be looking for a new team if he doesn’t make this happen. Daniel-san kicks Mr. Miyagi in the nuts. Sharks in six.

Mike: Past DOH guests Craig Custance (DOH 94) and Mark Purdy (DOH 88 and 51) have written about this series already.  It appears that both have picked the Wings to win, so now I’m questioning my decision to link to the them.  No matter.  As Custance said, this could change the reputation of the entire franchise.  This is the best team the Sharks have ever had in the playoffs, and you can’t say that for the Wings.  Sharks in seven.

Mike and Doug break down the last of the Avalanche series, and now look ahead to the new opponent, the hated/dreaded Detroit Red Wings.  The Dudes give first-round grades to all of the players, and pump themselves up with reasons why the Sharks will win the second round series.

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The Sharks win game 5 decidedly, and the Dudes finally revel in a great Sharks performance.  They talk about the breakthrough with Craig Anderson, who has looked great for the Sharks other than their dominant ‘second’ line, and how the rest of the Western Conference series might turn out.

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Last night, the prominent emotion I felt after Pavs scored was relief, and not elation.  The Sharks are seemingly back on track for the moment, tying the series, again putting up more scoring chances than the opposition, but this time they won.  I got the idea for today’s post by reading this, and to a lesser extent, tweeting this last night.  Marleau, for some reason, looks largely disinterested in this series, and outside of a couple of speedy drives to the net, has seemingly avoided the Flying Body Show that this series has been so far.  The difference in his play from Seto’s, for instance, could not be more stark.  Seto is hitting everything that moves, grinding it out, and Marleau is trying the shifty thing, neither taking nor issuing hits.  But judging a guy on how he ‘looks’ is awfully subjective, and prone to bias.  How can we judge their effectiveness?

One way is Corsi number.  This is a number that Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda talked about on the telecast many times, though they call it “shots directed at net”.  That is, shots + missed shots + blocked shots.  Corsi is merely that, but you also subtract the opponent’s number from yours.  At that point, you have something kind of a like a shot +/-.  The events are much more common than goals, so you have a much larger sample size and thus less variation.  Corsi (or Hardwick, which is the same as Corsi but doesn’t include blocked shots) can also be calculated for each individual player.  Here are the season numbers for San Jose.  I believe this is normalized for ice time, otherwise we wouldn’t have fractional numbers.  But as we can see, we have Boyle #1, and Marleau #2 (I don’t count Ferriero really).  Thanks to timeonice.com, let’s look at playoff numbers through four games (not normalized for ice time).

First thing to notice is that all of these numbers are positive, which is really remarkable.  That’s just another way of saying the Sharks have vastly out-chanced and out-shot the Avs in the series.  Also, we can see Marleau is currently 5th among forwards, and behind Kent Huskins, who was barely positive in the regular season.  Thornton and Heatley did not have good games 1 or 4 (and Heatley even missed game 3), and that accounts for their low numbers.  As one would expect, the numbers for the top line are all more or less in line for each of the games- low single digits for games 1 and 2, around 10 for game 3, and back down for game four.  The main reason why Marleau is above the other two is because of game 4, where he was +8, where Thornton was +1 and Heatley -1.  So my observation that Marleau was doing particularly bad was almost completely backwards.  Still, all in all, this chart confirms with hard numbers what we already thought- the top line is not performing.  Not even close.  If we can get those guys rolling, we can expect the Sharks to roll better too.

What a way to lose.  The Sharks, after possibly the most dominating performance of the entire season, lose after Dan Boyle puts the puck into his own net, on an angle a shooter couldn’t score from 99 times out of a100.  In the postgame, Boyle was obviously crushed, and possibly questioning the wisdom of agreeing to a trade to a team that is obviously cursed.  What’s next, the ghost of Shawn Cronin making Nabby-sized hole in the ice?

*Checking wikipedia...  Ok, Shawn Cronin is still alive.  So we can rest easy about that one.  But I do want Mr. Cronin to look both ways before crossing the street.

Podcast tonight.

In the meantime, let’s come up with a better tagline for the end of this video.  This one leaves me a bit cold…

It’s my fault. I take full responsibility for what happened at the Tank of Wednesday night and I’m prepared to make amends.

It was my playoff beard – or lack their of. I’m not a morning person, and in my haze on Wednesday AM and deprived of all caffeine, I shaved the beginnings of my fighting facial follicles – and the Sharks lost. Rest assured that this has been corrected and because of my two day old beard, the Sharks will win four games in a row and right the wrongs and heckles from Sharks haters that we as loyal fans have been subjected to the last 48 hours.

A few other thoughts before I wander to the Tank tonight:

It didn’t make me feel much better this morning to see Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau both proclaim that tonight’s game is not considered a “must win” in their minds. Really guys? I guess we shouldn’t expect anything else from them, but I certainly hope they play with a different intensity than that quote. If not, we’ll all be pointing to those comments as the slogan for why this team fails in April.

I’m not sure what Todd McLellan doesn’t see in Jamie McGinn but he played the fewest minutes of any player on both teams in Game 1. Based on reports from practice yesterday, it appears that Ortmeyer will be in for Game 2. Does that mean we’ll see two guys glued to the pine in the 3rd period? I thought this roster was deeper than last years, but the lack of love for his 4th liners is a consistent theme from McLellan this time of year.

If the Sharks have any hope of advancing, they need to make a statement tonight. There have been lots of Game 1 upsets this week and as Bill Shakespeare once said, “One game does not a series maketh, Hamlet”, but another bomb on home ice won’t have this team feeling lots of love from their home fans as they leave the Tank and head to enemy territory.

Respect the Superstition. Grow Beard Grow.