Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland has a theory about the NHL playoff race that makes a lot of sense. He believes that after Thanksgiving weekend, NHL teams move in a pack.
If they were good early, chances are they'll be good the rest of the way, or at least good enough to make the playoffs.
He also believes that if a team struggles in the early going, it'll probably struggle the rest of the way to make the playoffs.
Once in a great while, a team rallies all the way back to make the playoffs. The San Jose Sharks did it the season they acquired Joe Thornton on Nov. 30, when they were mired in 10th place.
Mostly, though, teams that get out of the gate well are usually the ones left standing as May turns into June and the Stanley Cup playoffs get down to the final four.
So with Thanksgiving behind us, there are two familiar teams atop the Western Conference standings: Detroit, last year's regular-season champions, and San Jose, last year's runners-up.
The only difference was they had flip-flopped spots. The Red Wings are five points behind the Sharks, the leaders at the critical Thanksgiving juncture.
San Jose is undefeated in regulation at home, 12-0-1, and tied with the Boston Bruins for the best road record in the league. The Sharks had won seven games in a row, heading into tonight's visit from Toronto, and along the way disproved the widely held theory that it takes time for any NHL team to integrate a series of important new faces into the organization.
The Sharks made a major change behind the bench -- Todd McLellan, a former Red Wings assistant, is the new head coach, replacing Ron Wilson. McLellan brought in a different staff that included Trent Yawney, a former NHL coach with the Chicago Blackhawks.
In addition, Sharks general manager Doug Wilson turned over 50 percent of his defense corps. The three newcomers -- Rob Blake, Dan Boyle and Brad Lukowich -- share one characteristic with the new coach. All have previously won Stanley Cup championships, something the Sharks have yet to do.
It was the reason Wilson targeted them all in the first place. He is not prepared to go overboard in his assessment of the team, despite the Sharks' remarkably strong showing in the early going.
In an interview, Wilson listed three primary factors for the Sharks' strong play -- tactical changes by the coaching staff, the overall personnel upgrades and the growth or improvement of his team's holdover players, many of whom had discouragingly average performances last season.
From the first day of training camp, McLellan stressed a more aggressive fore-check and less play on the perimeter. He especially wanted to see more shots directed toward the net. Last year, Detroit led the league by a wide margin in terms of overall shots on goal. That was a philosophy McLellan imported to his new gig.
It helps that Blake and Boyle both demonstrate strong offensive sensibilities from their defensive positions. Last year, the Sharks received only 113 scoring points all season from their top six defensemen (Craig Rivet, Christian Ehrhoff, Sandis Ozolinsh, Matt Carle, Marc-Eduard Vlasic and Kyle McLaren).
This season, the top six point-getters (Boyle, Blake, Ehrhoff, Vlasic, Lukowich and Alexei Semenov) already have 76 scoring points, with more than four months to go in the season.
Not surprisingly, that contributed to a new emphasis on offense.
Last season, the Sharks were 10th in the Western Conference in scoring; this season, they are No. 1. Second-year forward Devin Setoguchi is already 10 points ahead of his entire total from last year (27 compared with 17) and revitalized team captain Patrick Marleau is on a 90-point pace, after just 48 a year ago.
Even with all that good stuff going on, Wilson is guarded about where the team is at, cautioning "we're not there yet."
Fair enough. Wilson's attitude is deliberate and telling, and stems mostly from the fact that the Sharks have been everybody's preseason darlings for years now, but except for one season (2004 when they lost the Western Conference final to the Calgary Flames), they can't get out of the second round.
Accordingly, Wilson knows only too well that championships aren't won in October and November. They are won in April, May and June.
Until the Sharks actually win the Stanley Cup, or at least get a chance to play for it, they will continue to play down their fast start, trying (as much as possible) to ignore all that seductive early-season praise cascading on them from every corner of the NHL, just rounding the quarter pole.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnCanadian clients may not useMust credit Toronto Globe and Mail(All currency U.S.)
Post new comment