The Fog Rolls In

I really hate articles like this one by Ross McKeon on the Sharks struggles. He starts off with a thesis, “The Sharks GM Doug Wilson doesn’t want to shake things up but he may have to soon” and then spends the next sixteen or seventeen paragraphs explaining why a shake-up isn’t the way to go only to conclude that “Doug Wilson may have to shake things up, even if he doesn’t want to.”

Um.

Okay.

On one hand, McKeon has some points: The Sharks early ouster from the last three playoffs has been incredibly frustrating. Unfortunately for the Sharks they’ve managed to even circumvent their slow-climb forgiveness in the eyes of the fans who will, I think, no longer accept a trip to the finals regardless of outcome as a step in the right direction. I think San Jose fans expect a Cup and soon. I know I do, and I said as much during the last playoffs. The only possible factors in the Sharks occasional mid-season meltdowns and now clockwork playoff crumbling are A) the coaches B) the players or C) both.

McKeon though shies away from offering anything useful in terms of insight. Except he actually does, but he seems gunshy to spell it out. Let me glean some useful tidbits from his own text.

The team still needs to mature and show up on more nights than they have in the first half of the season. And, in terms of development, players like Matt Carle, Milan Michalek, Steve Bernier, Christian Ehrhoff, Joe Pavelski and Marcel Goc have to continue to improve instead of reaching a plateau and getting stuck.

It seems to me that development of young talent is, fundamentally, a job for the coaching staff. Few people who follow the Sharks (or hockey in general) would deny that Michalek, Bernier, Pavelski and Carle have the makings of good or even great NHL players. Just watch them play and you can see there’s something there. But the fact that Michalek for example has been around for several years now and has yet to really emerge as the powerhouse scoring winger that he clearly has the ability to be suggests there is something wrong either with him or with the way he’s being coached.

If it was just Michalek, I’d probably chalk it up to the player. But then you see a guy like Pavelski or Carle who came on board and made huge splashes in early games only to settle into a routine of mere competence. I can’t say for sure what is happening but consider this: The only real superstar on the Sharks is Joe Thornton, and he was that way before he got to San Jose. Who else, despite all the obvious talent on display, have these coaches crafted into a top-tier player? Marleau has been streaky his whole career and coasts just below the breakout line; Nabokov has also been streaky enough to avoid upper echelon mention (and most of his development lies in different hands than Ron Wilson’s et al). Cheechoo could have been the guy but again, just as he shows himself to be imminently capable, something reigns him in.

Frustration over recent results came bubbling to the surface Friday when Jeremy Roenick and Ron Wilson made some pointed comments, and the coach was caught the night before berating his team during a timeout on the video board, an image that brought a big cheer from the home crowd.

Those events, in addition to what he was seeing on the ice, triggered Doug Wilson to suggest the team meet on Friday instead of practice in preparation for Saturday’s visit by Anaheim, which skated off with a 5-2 victory. There was some damage control going on here, too. Management doesn’t want dirty laundry aired, and it was time to keep the gripes in-house, too.

Ron Wilson finally crawls over his under-achieving players, to the delight of the frustrated fans, and the response is to circle the wagons? Maybe I’m crazy but if players aren’t performing as hoped, maybe a little public outing wouldn’t hurt? It’s not like the fans aren’t noticing that the Sharks haven’t played that great. I’m just not sure who’s being protected here.

I suppose it should come as no surprise but I still hold Wilson accountable for last year’s playoff mistake and I think his leash ought to be as short as one can reasonably be. Doug Wilson is a fantastic GM and I’m sure he’d love to see Ron succeed, but then again Marco Sturm was a good winger that fans liked and everyone wanted to see him succeed but I didn’t hear a whole lot of crying when he ended up in Boston. Because, frankly, I’m getting to the point (and I can’t be alone) where I’m thinking “Just win, baby.” Like, whatever it takes. I like Marleau, I think he should be a Shark, but if it takes getting rid of him to get the Bay Area a Stanley Cup, then I say don’t let the door hit ya in the rear on the way out, Patty.

But before we start bailing on players that have become important parts of the lineup, maybe we should think about who’s guiding the practices?

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