The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

In the past I have been dismissive of the Kings’ success. I’ve said that their offense doesn’t exactly fill me with wonder, that their defense is a mishmash of mediocre-at-best veterans and Drew Doughty, and that the goaltending provided by Jon Quick — ahem, “Olympian Jon Quick,” as the Kings broadcast was so eager to remind us tonight — hasn’t left me optimistic about The Future of American Goaltending.

It’s games like tonight that highlight why.

Oh yes, on the scoreboard the stomped the everliving crap out of the Sharks. No way to candycoat a 6-2 thrashing like that. Not from a Sharks point of view, at least. You could even go so far as to say that Quick was under heavy fire tonight, facing 47 shots and somehow standing up to all but two of them.

But you could also make the argument that the Kings, as they have so many other times this year, backed into what appears to be a convincing win that should have been anything but.

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The Lead

Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

The Blackhawks came into tonight’s game in San Jose having lost in regulation just once since Oct. 30, going an absurd 8-1-1 in their last 10 and outscoring opponents — get this — 36 to 19. And the last three games of that stretch, in which they went 3-0-0 and outscored Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver 13 to 3, were on the road and in the space of four days.

And it still hadn’t gotten ridiculous. Not by a long shot.

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The Lead

John Tortorella must’ve been feelin’ strong. And why not?

The Rangers came into the game with one loss this season, that in their first game, and winners of seven in a row. So hey, the San Jose Sharks are coming to town, and while they did win the Presidents’ Trophy last year, they’re not exactly playing top-quality hockey.

So hey, let’s give one of the best goalies in the world the night off because this exciting new-look defense that hasn’t even allowed two goals a game can totally keep that up against a team with Devin Setoguchi, Danny Boyle, Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton and some fellow called Dany Heatley, even with Steve Valiquette between the pipes.

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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.

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The Lead

Admittedly, I thought the Bruins would walk in this game.

But the Sharks, who took an alarming amount of penalties (and inexplicably got away with a few others), had a plan. And in a battle of the league’s two best teams, they took an alarmingly easy 5-2 win.

The San Jose penalty kill, which went 5 for 5 and barely let the Bruins set up their 5-on-4 attack, was unstoppable. It controlled the boards, it controlled the center of the ice, it controlled the high-traffic areas near the faceoff dots. Boston had eight shots on the power play, but most were from the perimeter and Evgeni Nabokov, the game’s undisputed No. 1 star who collected 28 saves on 30 shots against a Boston attack which was among the best in the league and had a home power play running around 30 percent, had little problem with the few shots he faced from the perimeter.

Milan Lucic might have scored a pair of first-period goals to stake Boston to a 2-1 lead after the opening 20 minutes, but the Bruins had little answer for the Sharks’ defense, which blocked 12 shots and outhit Boston 39-25. Simply put, San Jose wanted this game more.

Garbage goals from Rob Blake, Patrick Marleau, and Milan Michalek, all of which came either on rebounds or deflections, allowed the Sharks to jump out to the lead they never surrendered, and insurance goals from Joe Thornton (who exorcised whichever demons you’d like to bring up regarding his Boston days) and Mike Grier (into an empty net) locked the game up late.

San Jose never looked like “The Team To Beat” in the NHL, but certainly in handing Boston its first loss of the seaosn by more than two goals, it made an emphatic statement as to the legitimacy of its claim that it would not go quietly into the night once it had met the second round of the playoffs.

If it could make Boston look this bad on the power play (and the Bruins had trouble even gaining the red line on its five man-up chances, putting just eight shots on net during its five power plays), and beat it by three goals, then surely the Sharks are a for-real, legitimate, no-joking-around contender for the Stanley Cup in a way that it had never been considered before. This wasn’t just a good regular-season team. This was a good all-the-time team.

It handled the best team in the league no problem. Winning on the road, on a Tuesday night, when they were in the midst of a three-game losing streak? Please. The Sharks could handle it. And win by three. What more qualification could need?

In maybe the most entertaining hockey game of the NHL schedule so far this season, the Sharks were not only winners, they were emphatic winners. Those fears about a second-round exit? Stop it. No.

The Sharks are legit. And that was all the evidence anyone should’ve needed. Beating the Bruins in the biggest regular-season game since the lockout? Yeah, that’ll square that away.

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The Lead

San Jose has had its problems of late. No one would deny that.

While the Sharks have earned points in eight of their last 10 games, they’ve also been handed 40 percent of their regulation losses and 60 percent of their shootout losses for the entire in that space. And while the two regulation losses were to very good teams in Detroit last week and Calgary tonight — both of which are closing the gap between the Sharks and the rest of the West in second and third place, respectively — the Sharks have been thoroughly outplayed in both.

The embarrassing 6-0 loss to Detroit was about as heavily-discussed as you’d imagine, tonight’s 5-2 loss to the Flames might go under the radar because, frankly, San Jose ain’t exactly San Jose any more.

Calgary opened a 3-0 lead in the first and Daymond Langkow added his second of the game early in the middle period to make it 4-0. San Jose just kinda skated around for most of that time, turned the puck over in the neutral zone, and hoped Evgeni Nabokov would somehow enough saves to erase the deficit. The rest of the Sharks, meanwhile, totalled four shots in the time it took Calgary to score its four goals.

There’s something seriously wrong with the Sharks now. They shouldn’t be settling for loser points against Columbus, St. Louis and Minnesota. A little over a month ago, they were in the middle of winning nine in a row and 17 of their last 20. Now look at them. Eight teams have more than or as many points from their last 10 games. One of those is Dallas.

The Sharks just aren’t playing like the Sharks any more, and maybe it’s because Todd McLellan looks like the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire.

(Yes I acknowledge that this is a five percenter.)

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Jeremy Roenick is no spring chicken. At 38 years old, he was one of the oldest players in the NHL. So when 18-year-old Samuel Groulx caught him with an elbow during a training camp scrimmage, what was he supposed to do?

He tried to get the kid, who was born over two years after Roenick made his NHL debut, to fight.

The veteran got in Groulx’s grill, threw a few words at him and then a punch to the helmet. A few more words and a second punch earned Roenick a roughing penalty.

A veteran like you should know they always catch the retaliatory penalty, JR. Always.

Groulx, for his part, didn’t know if he should put Old Man Roenick on his ass (and at 6-foot-2, 165, he probably could have), so he just kind of stood there dumbfounded.

“The situation was, I don’t know what to do,” he said after the scrimmage. “It was, ‘OK, sorry about that. I’m just trying to make the team.’ I don’t know, it was a crazy situation.”

If he really wanted to make the team, he would’ve one-punched Roenick. That’s what Kevin Bieksa did that one time, and he’s been in the NHL ever since.

Get it?

The Sharks made one of the shrewder moves of their offseason today, locking up promising young defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic to a four-year, $12.4 million deal that kicks in after this season.

While some of the moves the Sharks have made at the blueline this offseason — signing Rob Blake, and trading for Brad Lukowich and Dan Boyle — have been questionable given the franchise’s strong depth at the back, especially in kids like Vlasic and the now-traded Matt Carle and Ty Wishart. They’ve gotten older without necessarily getting better throughout the defensive corps (Rob Blake has to be pushing 50 at this point, right?) and it seems like a pretty short-sighted plan from GM Doug Wilson, but this Vlasic signing is a very good move.

Vlasic, whom the Sharks selected with the second-round pick they got in the deal that sent Miikka Kiprusoff to Calgary, may not put up big offensive numbers (two goals, 14 points last year), but he eats minutes like someone who is not just 21 years old, and he blocks shots.

“We think he’s one of the best young defensemen in the game and he plays in all situations,” General Manager Doug Wilson said Wednesday. “And we think he’ll only get better playing with some of the players we’ve added this summer.”

Conventional wisdom out west has San Jose pairing him with Blake, and Vlasic likes the area and team and wanted to stay long-term. Makes sense for both sides.

In two years, we’ll all be grumbling about what a great deal Vlasic, at just $3.1 million a season, is for the Sharks.

I swear this photo's caption on an actual newspaper website reads: "Ryane Clowe, left, celebrates his goal with Joe Thornton, far right, and Curtis Brown, middle, following Clowe’s second-period goal in the Sharks’ 3-1 win over Nashville. The Sharks take a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference quarterfinals." lol girl's name

One of the last restricted free agents standing, Ryane Clowe, has been re-signed to a one-year, $1.6 million contract.

Clowe’s a player that every team should want, and if not for an injury this season might have gotten a pretty big payday. At just 25, he has 44 points in 91 games over three seasons with the Sharks. He’s also very solid defensively and is a high-energy player that isn’t afraid to drop the gloves. $1.6 million is a steal for a player of a skillset so wideranging.

Clowe, 25, was limited to 15 games due to a knee injury he suffered in Columbus on Oct. 29. He returned to the line-up with only four games remaining in the regular season and finished with eight points (three goals, five assists).

In the 2008 playoffs, Clowe finished tied for the teams goal scoring lead (five) and his nine points was ranked second on the Sharks.

Clowe was an absolute monster in the playoffs, especially in the opening-round series against Calgary, scoring eight points and four goals in the seven-game series. It left many Flames fans wondering, “Who the hell was THAT guy?”

Next year, the whole league might find out.