The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

So.

Your team pretty much never wins playoff series and never lives up to the hype it always gets. Your best player by far has a reputation for being more or less Casper the Friendly Ghost come April. You have a rookie coach.

And you thought winning the President’s Trophy was going to help?

Nope, it didn’t. You’re still the San Jose Sharks. And you always will be.

Because in an era of massive roster turnover, the Sharks have remained shockingly static. Of the 19 players wearing a San Jose uniform tonight, nine appeared for them the 2005-06 season, and another three matriculated into the NHL with the franchise.

This is a Sharks team with an identity. And that identity is “lovable losers.” Because no matter how well they did in the regular season and how many morons (including myself) had them going deep in the playoffs, there was always that doubt that, well, they were still gonna crap all over themselves. I just didn’t think it would be this early.

The aforementioned best player, Joe Thornton? Yeah, he was exactly who you expect Joe Thornton to be in the playoffs: one shot, no points. Same goes for team captain Patrick Marleau. And Evgeni Nabokov never put the team in a position to win.

Know whose fault this is? Doug Wilson’s. He thought all he needed to make his team not-suck in the postseason was firing Ronnie Wilson? Sorry, that’s not enough to scrub five postseasons’ worth of Loser Stink™ off Marleau and Nabby. Blow it up, buddy. This ain’t workin’.

So that’ll do it for the President’s Trophy-winning San Jose Sharks, the Chicago Cubs of the National Hockey League.

Elsewhere…

Chicago 4, Calgary 1

As much as I expected this (and, frankly, I expected it two games earlier), it still bothered me. Mainly because the Flames, instead of playing with the intensity that they showed in their previous two home games, played like a bunch of moron idiots who did nothing but shoot from the perimeter and turn the puck over. Real brilliant strategy by Mike Keenan. It’s the one that worked so well for all those games in Chicago. Idiot. Blow this team up, too. And make sure Darryl Sutter’s in the blast radius.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 1:30 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.