The Making of the San Jose Sharks
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$3 So Easy A Caveman Could Do It $3 The Committed Indian The REal Fan’s Program blackhawksblog.blogspot.com November 16th, 2008 [email protected] CAGE IN THE WATER... In the immortal words of Axl Rose, we said the Sharks are the league’s best team. Michalek. Boyle, Erhoff, and Vlasic have not “All right, that SUCKED!”. There isn’t another What’re you going to do about it? Tell us how hesitated to bomb in from the points. Even way to describe Friday’s effort versus the hard the economy has hit Detroit again?). San the cadaver of Rob Blake has chipped in with Blues. It’s cute that the Hawks have enough Jose has taken a home-heavy schedule and 12 points. Watching the Sharks is akin to confidence to think they don’t have to show used it to separate themselves from their divi- watching Motorhead live. It’s frantic, thrilling, up for a full 60 minutes every night to win. sion, and conference. and you’ll have nothing left afterwards. However, it’s simply not the case. For the first We know some of you will think Now That You’re Sorry You’ve 10 minutes, the Hawks appeared to be nurs- you’ve heard it all before when it comes to the Bought Your Ticket ing hangovers. Or they were looking forward Sharks. This team is different. Gone are the The Sharks are a terrible match-up to getting hangovers, one or the other. By the rigid, tight-as-a-virgin’s-asshole Sharks, and for the Hawks. They’re a terrible match-up time they considered playing cogent hockey, taking their place are a free-wheeling, damn- for pretty much everyone. They’re bigger than they were down 3-1. the-torpedos bunch. New coach Todd McLel- the Hawks, and they’re as fast if not faster. That crisp passing that we marveled lan has installed a system that has the Sharks Making it worse, the Hawks d-men are going at during last Sunday’s game against the crashing the net like someone told them the to find it challenging--to say the least--to Flames? The past two games their pass- keg was about to run out of beer. They fire keep large, quick Sharks forwards, with their ing has been about as crisp as birthsauce. more shots than Theo Fleury on St. Patrick’s crash-the-net-or-die attitude, from making Struggling to create against the Bruins can Day. This team is all about relentless attack, Huet’s life utter hell tonight. The Hawks D be excused, but against the last-place Blues? attack, attack. The Sharks are to hockey right just isn’t big enough. All that said, the Sharks Turnovers were plentiful. Soft goals? Yeah, a now what The Bush Administration is to for- have been ordinary away from The Shark couple of those, too. Mental errors? Covered. eign policy (though The Bush Administration Tank, relatively speaking. So there’s a decent All in all, a night to forget. You know it was a probably wouldn’t care for the fact that the chance they may throw in a subpar effort, and piss-poor effort when Captain Serious airs it Sharks have a black guy on their team. We’re the Hawks are more than talented enough to out to the press after the game. with ya, Kanye). take advantage. However, any more of that That being said, if it wasn’t for a There are simply too many weapons dufuses-on-ice routine we saw Friday, and couple of post-ringers, the Hawks would have to count. The top line of Thornton, Marleau, we could see something resembling a football bagged two points without ever getting out of and Setoguchi has been on fire all season. score. -Eric B. and Rakim 2nd gear. One of the positives to be extracted San Jose was able to move Marleau to wing from Friday was the play of the Hawks’ 3rd because Ryan Clowe has been so good on the We’ve been asked by James Mirtle to join the line of Bolland, Byfuglien, and Ladd. They 2nd line, with Jonathan Cheechoo (currently SB Nation, so you can now catch our blog at were skating hard, they were physical, and injured, though may play tonight) and Milan secondcityhockey.com they provided the Hawks with all three of their goals. It was so obvious that this was the only line doing anything that Coach Q double- shifted them for the last part of the game. Hopefully, this kind of play from them will continue. Another heartening aspect of Friday’s tilt was, well, all the tilts. We don’t know if a new rule was instituted barring the Hawks from talking to the Ice Crew, or Coach Q broke their PSPs, or, more likely, it was their play, but something pissed the Hawks off badly. We can’t remember the last time the Hawks had four fights in a five-minute span. We’re pretty sure it was when we were all wading through inches of water on the bathroom floors of the old Stadium. The Blues have never been shy about puffing out their chests and taking lib- erties with a Hawks team they clearly thought would take it lying down. Good to see the Hawks won’t let that crap continue. Still, no one made Barrett Jackman bleed. Disappoint- ing. Put that on the to-do list, boys. I Know The Way To San Jose, Why The Fuck Would I Want To Go? The task at hand for the Hawks to have a successful homestand is only to beat the NHL’s best team (that’s right, Scum fans, “Well, he always said over his dead body!”. Behind The Net Getting To The Bottom of John Tavares We’ve been unabashed supporters of Behind The Net (www. Most of these players did not approach Tavares’ age-16 perfor- behindthenet.ca). Tonight, we’re lucky enough to have the creator of the mance, but even at these lower levels, they averaged nearly a point-per- site join us. He will do so every so often, and we couldn’t be happier. As all game in the NHL at age 18. 10 out of 12 of them arguably ended up being geniuses, he’s a mysertious dude, and not much is known about him. All we NHL stars – while Martin Lapointe played nearly 1000 NHL games (and the know is he goes by the moniker, “Hawerchuk”. We’ll let him take it from jury is still out on Rob Schremp). there. So what happened the next season? Tavares kept his output steady, which still placed him at the top of his age group: Can you imagine baseball fans across the country getting excited about a 16-year-old shortstop? Football fans getting worked up because a Name Season Age League PPG Adj freshman running back is dominating the varsity somewhere in Texas? Well, it happens all the time in hockey. Ever since a 16-year-old Wayne Gretzky Sidney Crosby 2004-05 17.40 QMJHL 2.71 2.55 stepped on the ice in 1977 and dominated players three years his senior in Jason Spezza 2000-01 17.55 OHL 2.10 1.89 the Ontario Hockey Association junior league, there’s been tremendous buzz Pierre-Marc 2001-02 17.68 QMJHL 2.03 1.74 around kids who would be a decade away from their primes in many other Bouchard sports. Hockey fans are always looking for the second-coming of Gretzky: Mario Lemieux in 1981, Eric Lindros in 1989, Sidney Crosby in 2003, and John Tavares 2007-08 17.28 OHL 2.00 1.74 now John Tavares. Pavel Brendl 1998-99 17.77 WHL 1.97 1.68 There was so much excitement around Tavares that Canada’s Dale Hawerchuk 1980-81 17.74 QMJHL 2.54 1.62 junior hockey leagues changed their rules to allow him to be drafted at age 14 and play just three days after his 15th birthday. Fans of bad NHL teams Ramzi Abid 1997-98 17.77 QMJHL 1.99 1.60 were already hoping they’d be bad enough to get the first draft pick in Vincent Lecava- 1997-98 17.70 QMJHL 1.98 1.60 2009 so they could pick him. He did not disappoint, scoring 45 goals in 65 lier games. The list of players who’ve put up numbers like this at such a young age over the last 25 years is a short one: Marc Savard 1994-95 17.46 OHL 2.11 1.56 Kyle Wellwood 2000-01 17.63 OHL 1.74 1.56 Name Season Age League PPG Adj Mario Lemieux 1982-83 17.24 QMJHL 2.79 1.55 John Tavares 2005-06 15.28 OHL 1.18 1.01 Joe Thornton 1996-97 17.50 OHL 2.07 1.55 Jason Spezza 1998-99 15.55 OHL 1.06 0.83 Pierre Turgeon 1986-87 17.34 QMJHL 2.66 1.55 Rob Brown 1983-84 15.73 WHL 1.16 0.69 Rob Brown 1985-86 17.73 WHL 2.51 1.51 The table lists each player’s age as of January 1st of that season. A few more good names pop up on the list, along with some huge The PPG column lists each player’s points-per-game, while Adj shows that disappointments. My initial inclination was that because Tavares wasn’t figure adjusted to a 6 goal-per-game offensive environment.