The Western Conference does not have a prohibitive favorite, like the Boston Bruins in the Eastern, but the St. Louis Blues are aiming for the Presidents’ Trophy, and the Chicago Blackhawks, the reigning Cup champs, present a savory option. The Anaheim Ducks are a powerhouse led by two of the NHL’s best forwards, and the Los Angeles Kings lead the NHL in Relative Corsi and Relative Fenwick, per ExtraSkater.com, and won the Cup in 2012. Nevertheless, Intelligent Hockey postulates that this is the season the San Jose Sharks make their first Cup appearance.
The Sharks are replete with depth up the middle among their top-six forwards. Joe Pavelski, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marelau, and Logan Couture are all natural centers, but Thornton and Marelau are playing the wing. This allows the Sharks to play aggressively in the faceoff circle, because if their nominal center gets kicked out, they have a reserve center ready to take the draw. And this has worked really well – the Sharks are second in the NHL in faceoff win percentage.
Their dual scoring lines are both lethal – Pavelski is second in the NHL in GVT per Hockey Prospectus, and centers the line with Joe Thornton and defenseman-turned-winger Brent Burns. That trio has size and puck skills, and plays with a ton of confidence. Burns has a quick release on his shot, and Pavelski can make the puck explode off his stick. Even the master distributor and reticent shooter, Thornton, has been scoring lately – these guys are intuitive hockey players who display good puck support and can execute a persistent forecheck or fast-hitting counterattack.
In the transition, net drive is needed to open up the seam, and the horizontal-vertical dimension is very evident on this line. If Thornton is making a cross-ice pass to Burns, Pavelski is around the teeth of the goal, providing the screen or waiting for the rebound. This line leads the Sharks’ forwards in Relative Corsi and Relative Fenwick by a significant margin, per ExtraSkater.com. Also, the Sharks may be the craftiest team in the NHL at faceoff plays. In the offensive zone, their tactical creativity makes for tremendous television. With this particular line, the faceoff plays call for lots of movement and misdirection but seem to always result in Burns blasting a slap shot from the high slot.
The Logan Couture line is more of the same. And really, that is the point. If a team’s first two scoring lines have equal potency, then it is in really, really good shape. Both lines are very good on their zone entries at even strength and on the power play. There is a stale but oft-used zone entry where the skater with the puck goes toward the blue line, leaves a drop pass that his teammate receives while skating into the puck and passes to the boards where a forward is waiting for the puck. This smoke-and-mirrors gizmo is run by most teams on the power play. However, San Jose dares to be different and has a variety of creative ways to enter the offensive zone. This enterprising strategy, combined with puck skills, yields great results.
The Couture line, with Patrick Marelau and Matt Nieto as the wingers, has lots of speed, playmaking and scoring. This line also shows 200-foot aptitude. The Sharks overload the strong side in their own zone, meaning that, when the puck is on one side of the ice, they flood that area with bodies. A team that is aggressive needs to gain possession in the puck battle quickly and fluidly move it out of the zone. All four San Jose lines do that, and Couture in particular shows a lot of composure making the right pass as Marelau and Nieto are speeding up the ice. Marleau will turn the puck over in prime areas on the ice, and is not a polished defensive player but, at 34, he still adds crucial speed and scoring ability.
Nieto is 21 and has under 60 games of NHL experience, so he is a bit of an unknown quantity come postseason, but he looks comfortable with the rising intensity level that end-of-season games feature. After a scorching start to March where he accrued four goals in the first seven games, Nieto has cooled down, going goalless in the last four games. But even in these contests, the Sharks gained five of eight points and Nieto tallied two assists. Most importantly for him, he is still seeing time with Couture and Marleau.
Conventional or advanced, the statistics heavily buttress a Sharks-to-the-Cup argument. They are in the top seven in goals per game and goals against, and they lead the NHL in shots per game while also ranking fifth in shots against. They are third in Fenwick Close and fifth in Corsi Close, and are third in the NHL in Shots for percentage, per ExtraSkater.com.
Pavelski, Burns, Thornton, and Couture have received a lot of justified accolades for how they have played, but the defense for the Sharks still seems a little overlooked. Marc-Edouard Vlasic is a really, really good player. Actually, he is closer to terrific. Vlasic leads the Sharks’ defensemen in Quality of Competition and gets difficult zone starts, yet his Relative Corsi is a team-leading positive 5.1 percent, per ExtraSkater.com.
To put that in context, Vlasic’s Relative Corsi is higher than that of Blackhawks’ defensemen Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook, and Kings’ defenseman Drew Doughty. Those other teams are superb at driving the puck and since this statistic is relative to a player’s teammates without him on the ice, what about comparing Vlasic to Erik Karlsson, the former Norris Trophy winner who plays for the Ottawa Senators, a decent team at driving play? Vlasic still has the edge in Relative Corsi over Karlsson. Vlasic’s Relative Fenwick is prolific, too.
Vlasic is not as good as Keith or Doughty, and his offensive game is still developing, but he is a star defenseman. He is excellent on his first pass, and is very good on defensive coverage.
Overall, the Sharks have a strong back end. Vlasic has been paired with Jason Demers, and the two have been gangbusters. Both have mobility in doses, and they get the puck to their skilled forwards and make good decisions. Both are acutely aware of their strengths and shortcomings, and their predictability often presents itself as a positive. They are reliable at exiting the zone and consistent at keeping the puck in the offensive zone.
Defenseman Justin Braun is paired with Matt Irwin, and they have been very good as well! San Jose’s is a top-four defense that can hold a lead or push the pace when down a goal – the importance of disrupting opposing attackers while quickly advancing the puck to their forwards is not lost on them. The Sharks are fueled by tempo and efficiency, emblematic of these guys.
The venerable Dan Boyle has had a great career, and can still do some good things – but his age is apparent in a bad way. He is paired with Scott Hannan of late and, if the Sharks falter, it is becoming more and more apparent some disastrous outcome will flow through this defensive pairing.
Goaltender Antti Niemi has been solid, and his .914 save percentage this season passes the smell test for the “Can this guy win us a Cup?” threshold. Niemi has done it before — with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 — and if need be, he can steal a game. He is an experienced goaltender who will not lose San Jose games.
It is funny, because pushing the Sharks as a popular Stanley Cup pick has been in vogue at this time of the season for several years now. Every year, analysts get suckered into them, and then they lose in one of the rounds before the final Cup round. But they are almost an afterthought this year because that has happened so many times.
Still, if this team wins the Pacific Division – and they hold a one point lead currently – they will have the No. 2 seed and some important home-ice advantage for a club that kills it at the Shark Tank. Their home record is 26-5-5. The atmosphere is electric during the regular season, but come playoffs, the fans go bonkers.
The Sharks are well-rounded in all facets. But timing is everything, and this article is intended to not solely extol them, but examine their Cup readiness in comparison with their peers. Right now, excluding the indefinite timetable on Tomas Hertl, they are not as injured as their counterparts. In last night’s Hockey Prospectus podcast, concerns were voiced about how the injury to Vladimir Tarasenko affects the Blues and their scoring when the checking gets tight. The Blues have a few other nicks and bruises, with T.J. Oshie especially having been on the receiving end of some brutal plays.
The Chicago Blackhawks just lost Patrick Kane to injury for a few weeks, and they are a completely different team without him. Moreover, those guys have played a lot of hockey over the last 15 months, and are a little banged up in general.
Anaheim is probably not a contender unless Cam Fowler is 100 percent healthy and right now he is out 3-5 weeks with a sprained MCL. To clarify, if you heard that Hockey Prospectus podcast, while Fowler is not as good as Minnesota Wild defensive superstar Ryan Suter, he shares some of the same strengths in terms of Quality of Competition, Deployment, and Time on Ice, per ExtraSkater.com. The two also share some of the same perceived weaknesses, namely a middling Relative Corsi and below expected GVT.
The Los Angeles Kings are very good, but whether they can score will be an uncomfortable specter hanging over them for as long as they last. The San Jose Sharks can score, they can make stops, and they have depth. Barring injury, they are Intelligent Hockey’s Western Conference Cup pick.
