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Just about every coach who ever watched Bull Durham or listened to Vince Lombardi's greatest rants will emphasize the importance of a fast start. This is not news. A fast start to the season builds in a cushion so that when the inevitable ebb and flow of the year eventually catches up to a team, there is perspective. There is calm. There is no panic. It happened last year to the Detroit Red Wings, who were 10-2-1 in October en route to a 115-point regular season – which gave them the overall league title by eight points over the runners-up, the San Jose Sharks.
It wasn't just the Red Wings, however, that turned an exceptional first month into a championship. In the past 10 years, according to stats crunched by the NHL, the eventual Stanley Cup champions produced a collective overall record for October of 88-19-15. The need to get out of the gate quickly was especially evident in the past four years, when the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Anaheim Ducks and then the Red Wings posted a cumulative 33-4-6 record in October. Tampa was 6-0-1; Carolina 8-2-1, and Anaheim 9-0-3. In fact, the Ducks technically didn't lose until the 17th game of the season in their Stanley Cup year, because of the generosity of the overtime/shootout loss, which no longer count in the loss column.
The Red Wings' general manager Ken Holland believes that the league moves in a pack after U.S. Thanksgiving (Nov. 27 on the calendar this year) and with few exceptions, he's correct. One of those exceptions came three years ago, when the Sharks were plodding through a November to forget (10 games in a row without a win) before pulling the trigger on the Joe Thornton deal.
Thornton made an instant impact on the Sharks, scoring 92 points in 58 games and reeling in Jaromir Jagr for the scoring title that year. The Sharks also vaulted all the way to fifth overall in the Western Conference and won their opening-round series against the Nashville Predators, before stumbling in the next round against the Edmonton Oilers.
The Sharks have the distinction of being the only team in the last four years to win at least one playoff round, something not even Detroit managed to do (they lost in the first round in ‘06, the year all four top seeds in the conference were knocked off in the first round).
Usually, around now, the Sharks are a sexy choice to win the Stanley Cup, but this year, support for their candidacy has been muted by past playoff failures. This is curious only because they made real tangible off-season improvements, addressing the one key weakness – the lack of a dominant, minute-munching defenceman. Detroit boasts Nicklas Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski; Anaheim can counter with Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger. Until last year's trading deadline, when they briefly rented Brian Campbell from the Buffalo Sabres, the best the Sharks could do were Christian Ehrhoff and Marc-Eduard Vlasic (don't laugh; among defencemen who played the full season in San Jose last year, they averaged the most minutes).
But this year, GM Doug Wilson opened the Sharks' wallet to add Dan Boyle and Rob Blake, both of whom have previously won a Stanley Cup championship. For Thornton, the presence of that pair makes a night-and-day difference in the team's attitude and approach.
“As a left-handed shot, having two righties on the power play is really going to help me,” said Thornton in an interview. “Blakie is so solid and Boyle skates like the wind. They're explosive. They're going to be a huge difference for our team, two defencemen that can play 25 to 30 minutes a game.
“If you look at who's won the last two years, Detroit with Lidstrom and Anaheim with Niedermayer and Pronger. It's nice for us to have two guys like that now that can play in every situation. We haven't had that before.”
Now going into his 11th season, Thornton is one of the few players to average more than a point a game over the past decade (756 careers points in 754 career games). He spent the summer doing vacationing in Thailand and then stopped off in Egypt to see the pyramids on the way home.
Jumbo Joe remains one of the NHL's most consistent scorers – and three years in a row, has led the league in assists. His playoff numbers in San Jose are thoroughly respectable – 30 points in 34 games over three years, but the Sharks have not been able to get to the Western Conference final since 2004, losing in the second round in each of the past three seasons.
Until the Sharks actually win the Stanley Cup – or at least get to the final – there will always be questions about their ability to win when it matters.
Last year, the Sharks got a big playoff after a so-so regular season from team captain Patrick Marleau, who slumped to 48 points from 78 points he scored the year before. This year, new coach Todd McLellan has put Marleau on Thornton's line and the lucky winner on the other side, for now anyway, is second-year forward Devin Setoguchi.
“Ronnie (Wilson) was great, but getting a new voice behind the bench means a lot of guys can start fresh,” said Thornton, who added that he “loves playing with Patty” and that Setoguchi “really impressed me with his skating. He looks so powerful out there”.
That left a second line featuring Joe Pavelski, Milan Michalek and Jonathan Cheechoo, who won the Rocket Richard Trophy as the NHL's goal-scoring leader in Thornton's first year with the team, but struggled to only 37 points – and 23 goals – last season. Cheechoo was bothered early by an off-season sports hernia operation and never really found his stride a year ago. However, two goals in the opener, a 4-1 win over Anaheim – and a willingness to go hard to the net – suggest the possibility of a turnaround season. Cheechoo plays with Thornton and Marleau on the first power-play unit, so their partnership – so successful two years back - is not at an end just yet.
As for McLellan, their rookie head coach, who is fresh off a Stanley Cup championship with the Red Wings, his position is the Sharks will deal with playoff expectations once they get to April – and not until then.
“Todd's really stressed that the Stanley Cup's not going to be won today and that it's not going to be won tomorrow,” said Thornton. “He's trying to work on little things every day, taking baby steps, so that we can be ready for Game 83, 84 and beyond. It's just a little tweaking – he wants us to drive the net more and worry about our positioning and get us turning the right away, that kind of thing. There's a little more structure to our game. It's such a long year and such a roller coaster ride that right now, he just wants us to get better game by game.
“So we're not thinking about June. We're thinking about Thursday and then we'll think about Saturday after that.”
ETC, ETC: The semi-public fencing going on between the Minnesota Wild and Marian Gaborik over a possible contract extension usually means only one thing – there is little hope that the two sides can strike a deal and eventually, the Wild will have to explore trade options, rather than lose him for nothing. If it comes to that – and since north of $8-million (all currency U.S.) per season for varying terms, including up to 10 years, doesn't sound like it's going to get it done – then the question will be, what will Gaborik command on the trade market? He is a dynamic and talented offensive player, but with a history of fragility – or until last year, when he had a breakout 82-point season and maybe just as importantly, played in 77 games. Long-term, the most logical fit for Gaborik would be Vancouver, which has Mats Sundin's money to spend and where his fellow Slovak, Pavol Demitra, is already in place. It is unlikely the Wild would ever place him with a divisional rival, however, and so the challenge for GM Doug Risebrough, if he is obliged to trade him, is to maximize his return – easier said than done, considering the two biggest names to change teams under similar circumstances last year, Marian Hossa and Campbell, put in their time as rent-a-players in Pittsburgh and San Jose respectively before bolting for greener, more lucrative pastures, as unrestricted free agents. Los Angeles will have money to spend too, so they'd be a possibility, but if not the Kings, then it wouldn't be much of a surprise if, on the opening day of the 2009 free-agency season, Gaborik landed in Vancouver … NHL rosters were finalized on Thursday and in the salary-cap era, where virtually every team is financially squeezed to some degree, the one clear trend to emerge was how difficult it is now for a veteran player to come to training camp on a tryout and subsequently earn a contract. Jeff Friesen couldn't do it in San Jose, despite a decent exhibition season. Bryan Berard couldn't do it in Philadelphia, even though the Flyers have two defenceman on the long-term injury reserve (Derian Hatcher, Mike Rathje), and two others (Randy Jones and Ryan Parent) on the shelf for two-to-three months as a result of hip and shoulder surgery respectively. The Flyers' answer was to keep Luca Sbisa, their No. 1 choice in the 2008 entry draft, around for at least the first nine games. There were lots of available defencemen on the NHL waiver wire; the problem is that the Flyers are actually $7-million over the $56.7-million cap (permitted because of the two players on LTIR). Officially, they begin the season $253,000 under the cap – not enough room in other words to add a warm body yet … In Carolina, Jeff O'Neill's comeback also came up short, but the Hurricanes were that rare teams to sign a tryout player. The lucky lad was 30-year-old Dan LaCouture, who played last season for HC Lugano in Switzerland after it looked as if his 326-game NHL career were over. LaCouture took the NHL minimum ($475,000) and was scheduled to start the season on a line with rookie Brandon Sutter. The Canes needed help up front after Scott Walker and Justin Williams were both lost for extended periods with injuries … Incidentally, Brandon Sutter is Brent's son and not to be confused with Brett Sutter, who is Darryl's son, and is starting the season the Calgary system, playing for Quad Cities. Brandon was a first-round pick of the Hurricanes, 11th overall in 2007; Brett was a seventh-round pick of the Flames, 179th overall, in 2005, who scored 10 points in 75 games as an AHL rookie last season. The Flames previously draft Shaun Sutter, Brian's son, a decade ago, but after kicking around the minors for seven years without an NHL game, he has played mostly in Europe since (and is in Germany's second division with Lausitzer at the moment) … The Hurricanes also kept their 2008 first-rounder, Zach Boychuk, around, even though he is recovering from July wrist surgery. Boychuk is on their 23-man roster and the expectation is he could play by next weekend … Nice start for the Bruins' Patrice Bergeron, who earned two assists in their opener, a 5-4 road win over Colorado. It marked Bergeron's first game in almost a year, or since he suffered a season-ending concussion versus Philadelphia last year in late October. Bergeron played six of the Bruins' eight exhibition games, trying to get up to tempo again, and averaged a point a game, tying him with Andrew Ference for the team's pre-season scoring lead … In the same way that exhibition season doesn't always give a true harbinger of things to come, season-openers aren't necessarily a good barometer either. Presumably, that's how Colorado will characterize the loss to the Bruins, in which they badly outplayed the visitors, but were undermined by a weak performance from goaltender Peter Budaj. Budaj re-inherited the No. 1 job after Jose Theodore's departure as a free agent, and gave up five goals on 20 shots against an opportunistic Bruins' team. Too many more like that and pretty soon ex-Leaf Andrew Raycroft (3.90 GAA, .831 save percentage in three exhibition appearances) may even get a look ... And finally, 16 NHL players have a chance to reach the 1,000-game milestone, but the first to do it will be the Avalanche's Adam Foote, who will get there in Sunday's game against the Edmonton Oilers. With that appearance, Foote will also tie Hall Of Famer Michel Goulet for second place in franchise games played with 813.
