Sharks Stew

During the epic Game 6 of the Dallas-San Jose series there was a moment when the camera lingered on Ron Wilson for a while and then switched to Dave Tippett. The thought crossed my mind that whoever lost the game would be in lined for the Atlanta Thrashers position. As coaches of perennially fragile playoff teams there would be a lot of pressure on both men to "get somewhere" during the playoffs and whoever did was certain to face the axe. Granted, Tippett was probably in a bit less trouble going in than Wilson was. He had managed to get the Stars into the second round for once and Marty Turco finally had a playoff performance worthy of his regular seasons. He did that in 2007 against the Canucks but just didn't stand on his head long enough to get a 4th shutout against Luongo. But I digress.

Even with a quadruple OT loss, the Sharks were a disaster and for some reason have a hard time finding their adrenal gland during the playoffs. They occasionally brushed up against it during the first round against Calgary and let themselves be pushed to 7 games by a team far too inconsistent for its own good. The struggles in the second round might be underplayed by commenting on how many games went to OT but that kind of talk is reserved for also-rans who pretend to be satisfied with moral victories. Leadership was dearly lacking in San Jose and through 13 games of playoff hockey it seemed that the Sharks were intent to proceed on their Stanley Cup run as they did through their regular season - they thought they would just turn it on when they had to. Up until February, there were questions about when the real Sharks were going to show up and dominate the way everyone anticipated. After seeing the performance in the playoffs it might be reasonable to argue that it was the real Sharks that we saw from October to February.

There is, by no means, a shortage of talent on the Sharks roster, but there is a feeling that some of the players who made such splashy arrivals in the NHL had taken a step backward. Christian Ehrhoff, and Marc-Eduoard Vlasic for starters did not seem to be playing at the level that they did a year earlier. Joe Pavelski had a great playoff but maybe he was one of the few who got the memo that the regular season was behind them.

A lot of pressure will fall on Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau for how things went and there will be questions about the chemistry of the team with the two of them leading the team and centring the top two lines. Marleau might just be trade bait and this is a team that might need more than a bit of tinkering and trade deadline bolstering to shake them out of their doldrums. Ron Wilson is likely the safest experiment with the chemistry of the team, but I'd recommend that Doug Wilson be confident enough with his pipeline of talent to make bolder moves. Marleau is the likely candidate as he is in as many trade rumours and Ron Wilson firing rumours and a bold move along the lines of the Sundin for Clark trade might be just what the Sharks need. Let Marleau clearly establish himself as a first line centre somewhere else and bring in a grittier sparkplug in the mold of a younger Mike Ricci. The Sharks as they hang together right now will be far too fragile come next April and Doug Wilson's going to be the next one on the hot seat.

However, I suspect Doug Wilson will tread gingerly and not make such a bold move. He'll even pass on adding UFA wonderpest Sean Avery, who has just the edge the Sharks need.