The Sharks’ Playoff Struggles

The Sharks’ Playoff Struggles

[paypal_donation_button]The Sharks’ Playoff Struggles

The San Jose Sharks missed the playoffs in 2014-15 for the first time in over a decade. While this was a shocking turn of events for a team as stacked with talent as the Sharks, it is only the most severe in a string of arguable under-achievement. Through 10 consecutive seasons good enough to get them in playoff contention, the Sharks have led their division five times (and the league once) at the end of the regular season, and made it to three Conference Finals. That they accomplished all this without once winning a Stanley Cup—or even a Conference title—is one of the more baffling situations in the post-lockout NHL.
The reasons the Sharks missed the post-season in 2014-15 are not so baffling. Frustrated by their continual post-season under-performance, the Sharks made significant roster changes to their team in the 2014 off-season, the most prominent of which was the trading of defenseman Dan Boyle, whose hole in the line-up Brent Burns couldn’t quite fill in the 2014-15 NHL season. The management even considered trading team leaders Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau. Though they wisely refrained from pulling that trigger just yet, even the rumors of a trade spoke to panic. It was this sense of fear, more than the shifting of players, which led to their team’s discombobulation. Through the 2014-15 season, the Sharks won more games on the road than they did at home, something which hasn’t happened to the Sharks since 2007-08. The pressure to play well in front of the home fans, something that’s there for every team to some extent, was only increased by their history of falling short for big games.

The panic and trade rumors were precipitated by the Sharks’ especially painful 2014 post-season exit. The Sharks entered the playoffs as the second seed in the Western Conference and were favored over the Los Angeles Kings. Up 3-0 in the series going into game 4, the Sharks seemed to have a stranglehold over the series—until the Los Angeles Kings won 4 straight games, making the Sharks only the fourth team in NHL history to lose a series after being up 3-0. Though the Kings would also beat everyone else on their way to the Stanley Cup, that was little balm after such a devastating turn-around.

The Sharks seemed the closest to a championship in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 NHL seasons when they made consecutive Conference Finals. Like their loss to the Kings in 2014, their Conference Finals loss to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 seems to speak to a bit of bad luck—the Sharks were good; the Blackhawks were phenomenal. In 2011, however, their elimination seemed more inexplicable. The Sharks started strong, knocking out the Kings then moving on to face the Detroit Red Wings in the Conference Semifinals. As would happen in 2014, their momentum seemed to flag once they went up 3-0 in the series; though the Sharks would ultimately defeat the Red Wings it took them the full 7 games, and the team never seemed to regain its stride. The Vancouver Canucks knocked them out in the Conference Finals in five games.

Twice during their 10-year post-season streak the Sharks have stripped their captain of his captaincy—a rare move for any team, much less one that’s consistently finished with such a high seed in the standings. Both Marleau and Thornton have worn the C and then been stripped of that title, despite remaining integral players on the team. Whether or not the Sharks’ woes can be blamed on the leadership (or lack there-of) these players provided, neither player has been able to motivate their teammates to step up and compete when the pressure’s on. The years during their playoff streak that the Sharks couldn’t escape the first round were all years Marleau, Thornton, or both had significantly diminished post-season production, like in 2012 when Marleau didn’t score a single point—or in 2014, when 8 of the 10 points Thornton and Marleau scored between them came in the first 3 games. When those two don’t score, the Sharks don’t win.
In sports—as in many areas of life—confidence and success go hand in hand. Teams that are winning seem to get all the lucky bounces; teams that are losing seem to get all the rotten luck. After 10 seasons of early exits from the playoffs, the Sharks need to regain their belief that they can win. Their poor playoff performance was a problem with the locker room and leadership, not with the roster, as their decline in the 2014-15 season demonstrated all too clearly.