We Rule

This will be our 37th post in November, by far our most prolific month in the history of this blog. Thanks to Grier for helping to make it our best month ever, both in terms of posts and in terms of readership. Though I could have done without that last one.

What Mikey Wants for Christmas...

Someone tell Santa to put this gift under the tree of my fellow blogger. I think Mike would want his in Matt Carle.

Seriously hilarious.

Purdy reads Shaved Ice??

Good article in the Merc today by Purdy that follows up on what we talked about yesterday. Does he have Shaved Ice on his favorite bookmarks?

My diagnosis: They have a climate-control crisis. The team temperature never seems to rise or fall. Behind or ahead, the Sharks operate at the same constant level of intensity. Some nights, that's enough. Other nights, when the temperature needs to be turned up, it's definitely not. And of course, when you're talking about a hockey team's attitude, you tend to look at the captain. That would be Patrick Marleau. He is the ultimate Mr. Climate Control. A coincidence? Marleau's biggest asset might also be his biggest weakness. His demeanor seems to stay the same, no matter what goes on around him. He's never too excited. He's never too depressed.

Check out the rest below. He makes the similar argument I did yesterday that, with Marleau at the helm, this team may never rev up the intensity enough to take the next step. Marleau knows he plays on the even keel, but his self comparison to Vinny D is pretty off the mark. Vinny has several season of 70+ PIM's, so I'd say he played with a little more tenacity.

Royally beat down by the Kings...

Let's face it Sharks fans. This team isn't lacking skill - they are lacking intensity and heart. To allow yourself to get beat two nights in a row AT HOME by a team that is currently assembled of players no one wanted mixed with a few young guys is inexcusable. The fans in our section (props to 124!!) were disgusted by the result and you can feel the Tank is not the home ice advantage it used to be. The Sharks don't own "Sharks Territory" anymore and the Kings certainly aren't afraid of coming to town, it might be their favorite place after all. I think I saw Kopitar and O'Sullivan skipping through Christmas in the Park actually. Cute couple.

You can't teach heart. Some of these guys on the Sharks just don't have it. We know who Marleau is - a very good skill player without much fire and prone to slumps. When that is who your Captain is - the teams attitude reflect it. When your Captain is Chris Pronger or Brendan Morrow....I think you know the answer.

GM Meeetings are upon us. Doug Wilson, your move boss.

Lean On the Guy With One Leg

You know what really sucks about last night? The Sharks couldn't even beat the last-place team in the division missing two of their top three scorers. Kopitar was the only King in the lineup who the Sharks really needed to watch out for, and they didn't. Kopitar's goal was a bit of a flukey play in that the puck was just laying under Nabby, unbeknownst to him, but the Sharks launched into their 'woe is me' bit again after that. They used the kooky Kopitar goal as an excuse to play like crap for the next twenty minutes or so. Flat-out missed coverage led to the second goal, and the Sharks had to scramble to tie it. Then they sat on their haunches, like they are automatic in OT and the shootout. Note to Sharks: not so much. Nabby looked foolish on all three shootout goals, and it was game over.

On Friday we play a team that will make the playoffs this year, and if the Sharks take a period off like they did last night, we'll suffer another 6-2 beatdown like we did on October 7th.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

So Nick asked in the comments of the previous post:

in my limited-knowledge opinion I think the one name that hasn't been talked about, but should be, is Cheechoo. I know everyone think back to 2 years ago and how he broke out under big joe but in the end I think history will show that he had one miracle year and fizzled out. While he doesn't pull a huge contract I think he would be the best form of trade bait despite his poor numbers this year. Your thoughts?

I decided to make a whole post on it, because I tend to get long-winded at times like these.

Let's talk about the prospect of the Sharks trading a major player first (Marleau, Cheech, Joe, etc.). It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given Doug Wilson's history of deliberate moves. I think it's a unnecessary panic move. Given how stacked the Sharks are with young talent, I don't think any trade like this would happen this year. Unless the Sharks gain a big time piece that would stick around for several years. This isn't an aging team that needs to win now.

About Cheech- first of all, being tied for 14th in the league (last year with 37 goals) isn't 'fizzling out' in my opinion. Here are some players who scored fewer goals than Cheech last year ( a 'disappointing' year according to some): Hejduk, Zetterberg, Briere, Jagr, Smyth. Let's not call him a flash in the pan quite yet. Only 1 guy since 2000 has had back-to-back 50 goal seasons, and only 3 guys have had back-to-back 40 goal seasons.

None of that means he's not having a brutal year so far. Of course he is. As I said in my first Teal Spiel call, I'm not convinced the Sharks' coaching staff are giving Cheech the best opportunity to succeed. At that time, I thought they were punishing him for playing badly, putting him on the fourth line where he has basically no chance to score. He needs a guy feeding him. Since then, he's showed a bit more spark, hasn't spent as much time on the 4th line, and still hasn't opened it up. He's working very hard, but the biscuit ain't going in the basket.

We're still only a quarter of the season in. I don't think you trade a guy who's in a 20-game scoring slump after he had two great years. Reason #1 - you won't get the best value for him. Reason #2 - it's bad business. As you said, he's not breaking the bank, and the Sharks aren't up against the cap. The problem with the Sharks right now seems to be lack of scoring- why would we want to dump our top scorer the last two years? Even if we package him with other players or picks for a truly elite scorer, is that really going to make enough of a difference? Best case is we'd gain 50 goals (if we're damn lucky) plus a huge contract and lose 30 goals and a cheap contract.

So here's my prescription. You don't trade Cheech this year, regardless of what happens. He goes half a season with 10 goals, you put him on the fourth line again, you put him in the press box, and you hope the disincentive pushes his buttons. He's a ferociously competitive guy. I've seen it personally at Sharks practices. He's the first guy that knows he's sucking, and the last guy that wants to drag his team down. If that mentality changes AND his output stays horrible, you consider trading him after the season is over.

I Just Can't Shut My Trap

What can I say, I get excited about Sharks hockey. And there's only one radio show. Here's my latest... I talk about the Carle contract, Sharks trade ideas, and the Kings matchup last Saturday (before it happened, of course). Don't forget to hear the part where I claim the Kings have "horrible goalie problems", and of course, LaBarbera played great, making 26 saves on 27 shots.

After that loser of a comment, I don't know why they'd want me back, but I'll be taking part in the "roundtable discussion" segment of the show this week, with Dan Rusanowsky (voice of the Sharks on radio). Don't kid yourself- I won't be going in cold, but I can always use help. If you have an interesting topic of discussion, or questions for Mr. Rusanowsky, please leave them in the comments. I'll bring them up if the discussion steers that way.

The Fourth Line

The grinders. The grit. The muscle. These are the guys who you usually find on the ice on an NHL 4th line. The offensive line of a hockey club, doing the thankless work that rarely shows up on the stat sheet. Winning a key face off, delivering a meaningful hit, intimidating an opponents star player. The Sharks lack a truly effective 4th line. We have seen different versions of it the past few weeks, but the combination usually revolves around Goc, Bernier, Brown, Rizz and now the new and improved LW Rob Davison. While Bernier has shown flashes of life and physical play as a 4th liner, the others have rotated in and out of the line up and haven't performed the duties described above with any consistency or fire. The 4th line is just the collection of players that suck enough to not be on the top two lines, but good enough to avoid being scratched.

I'm not a big Rizz guy - Mike and I both agree that he does everything average and we've seen everything there is to see from him. Good guy, tries really hard, but we know what we know about the Rizz. He needs to be replaced. I certainly don't think he is in the Sharks long term plans. Send him to the press box. I suggest rolling Bernier-Brownie-Davison for now, but this is an area DW needs to address before season's end.

A few other comments/notes

- Toronto continues to implode. Maybe Mike and my wish for Darcy Tucker could become a reality??? He has never played out West and maybe he has no desire to. We will see...

- Eklund has gone off the deep end, I've decided. Today he commented that the Sharks and Ducks are asking Montreal about Huet. Huet now? What do the Sharks want with another #1 goaltender? The Ducks just got rid of one - so now they want Huet? Nonsense. I enjoy reading his blog for fun but his rumors are going sour...

- Hey Ron Wilson? Please no more rolling out seven defensemen please. I would rather see the Sharks call up Kaspar or Armstrong than endure another game of seven D.

See you at the Tank on Wednesday!

"Hype it up"?

You may have noticed that there's a new little link at the end of each post that says "hype it up". It's a tracking mechanism, kind of like Digg (if you know what that is). I registered at a site called BallHype, which tracks sports blogs. If a particular blog entry gets enough 'hype' (i.e. readers click on the 'hype it up' link enough times) it'll show up over there, which might just send a few more readers over here. A tiny way for us to get a bit more visibility. And a decent spot to find cool hockey blogs, if you're into that sort of thing. Which you are, because you're reading this drivel.

So hype up the posts you like. It's not gathering personal information on you or anything, unless you sign up over there. I totally understand if you can't be bothered to click on a link every once in a while- I have a remote control for a fan in my bedroom that is literally three feet away from where I sleep. And here I was using my arms like a sucker.

No Offense, Ho Hum

Again with the losing. The Sharks gave up two power play goals in the first period and went on to lose 2-1. They didn't really show any urgency until quite late in the third period, when they managed to score. The Kings were wandering around at the end of the game, with the Sharks buzzing, but L.A. managed to run out the clock, barely. I actually turned to Grier with about ten minutes left in the game and said, "They're playing like the game is tied." It was 2-0 at the time. The lack of desperation was palpable.

One thing that is interesting is the Sharks again outshot their opponents, this time 27-17. The Sharks have lost eight times in regulation this season, and only three of those times were they outshot. The two losses to Detroit, and the one against Columbus (outshot 18-17). In total, the Sharks have outshot their regulation betters 219-188 (on average 27 to 23).

What this means, I'm not exactly sure. Could they be watching stats during the game, thinking that outshooting the opposition somehow excuses their lack of tallies? That seems pretty unlikely. Eight games is not exactly a sample size, but only being outshot 3 of 8 times seems extraordinarily odd. The Ducks have lost nine games in regulation, and only two of those times they weren't outshot. The Kings have lost twelve in regulation, and were outshot in ten of those games. It's a very odd circumstance, but I honestly have no idea what it means. It could just mean the obvious, the Sharks are able to hit the broad side of a barn with the puck, but they can't actually get it past the goalies.

I have a feeling this might have something to do with their dismal play at home. Their five losses at home they've outshot the opposition 165-106 (33 to 21), much more lopsided than the overall numbers above. Are the Sharks just soaking up the adulation at home, knowing the fans will cheer the slightest scoring chance or the most routine save?

I'm pretty well stumped, any ideas?

Great Job Doug Wilson!!!

Resigning Matt Carle is a great way to start the Thanksgiving break. Even though he has been in and out of the doghouse this year, Carle and Vlasic are the future of the Sharks blueline, along with Rivet and Ty Wishart. I think Wilson showed Carle a ton of confidence by making this deal and we could see the results immediately on the stat sheet. I know he got four years - and I'm going to guess he got around 14 million - a similar deal that New Jersey Devils defensemen Paul Martin got in the offseason.

Now Doug has to decide who is next on the list - do you extend Pavelski? Bernier? Do you extend Clowe now or wait and see how he comes back from injury? What does this mean for Ehrhoff and Goc? Well you know my opinion - I think all of these players, except Clowe, are available in trade market for an impact veteran. I think you keep Bernier, especially the way he has recently found out that checking people and standing in front of the net is a good thing for someone his size, and see what kind of impact player Ehrhoff and Pavelski can fetch. I think it could net someone pretty good.

Okay. That's really it from me until after Saturday's game, barring some major news to discuss. Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Fan(s) Have Spoken

Before now, I used sitemeter to gather statistics for this site (you can still see the little counter all the way at the bottom of the page). But yesterday, I signed up for for Google Analytics, because they will report not just how many views and visitors you have, but pretty charts and maps and referring sites and all the crap a math-loving dork like me loves.

It takes about a day for the first stats to start rolling in, and I just checked it for the first time a minute ago. As expected, we get referrals from chompboard and BoC, but there was another table that reports which keywords the visitors searched for that ended up here. Here it is. I swear to God I did not Photoshop it.



To our wonderful reader that is looking shave his or her <shudder> ass, stay tuned. I'll try to convince Grier to write it up.

Koivu and Ohlund

You've probably heard about this story already- it's been around the hockey media pretty quickly. Just watch the video:



So Ohlund gets a 4-game suspension. FOUR GAMES. I'm not exactly sure how far Colin Campbell's head is up his ass, but I bet his breath smells like shit.

I guess I thought the NHL was interested in cracking down on some of the extraneous dirty stuff in the league. We see Steve Downie get a 20-game suspension, and Jesse Boulerice get 25. Then this, which makes absolutely no sense.

Let's give Ohlund the benefit of the doubt. Koivu got his elbow up, and probably deserved a penalty, perhaps a major or even a misconduct. But it's inarguable that happened during the course of play, dirty though it may be. But Ohlund's chop had nothing to do with the game; it was revenge. Personally, I don't care if Koivu was anally raping Ohlund's mother while pouring sugar in his gas tank- Ohlund deserves a 25 or 30 game suspension, at least. He deliberately broke Koivu's leg from behind with his stick.

To me, this incident is much worse than the Downie hit, and maybe worse than the Boulerice hit. You could at least make a (poor) case that Boulerice didn't mean to get his stick up so high. But Ohlund did exactly what he intended. Mission accomplished.

NHL Meetings on the Horizon

The Mercury News had a great article today where Doug Wilson made an interesting statement that I think should not go unnoticed.

The question Wilson asks himself is this: "Are we getting better as a hockey team at the things that will allow us to be successful at the end of the year?" And his answer? "I've seen a couple things recently, but we're certainly not satisfied with where we're at," Wilson said.

Here's the link.

Hmmm.....We have to remember that even with the recent upswing, Thanksgiving is Doug Wilson's favorite time of year. Two years ago he brought us a giant Holiday surprise in Joe Thornton. While I certainly don't expect a franchise altering move like that, I think we should take Doug Wilson seriously. He sees what I see. Yes, the Sharks have been playing harder and the result has shown up in the win column, but is this team better than last year, or the year before, when they have come to a dead stop in the 2nd round? The answer is, unfortunately, no. They aren't better. They are the same, if anything. This current collection of talent won't beat Detroit in a seven game series. Wilson needs to tweak the roster, not overhaul - and his comments lead me to believe that this could be coming sooner rather than later. An agitator? The number one D-man Wilson has wanted under his tree for years? A power forward to replace Ryane Clowe? A back up goalie? Take your pick - we have the right combo of NHL ready young talent and cap room to get almost any deal done Doug Wilson desires.

So dig in for a potential exciting end of November - we could be seeing a new face or two in Teal Town - but only if Dougie doesn't overload on too much stuffing and yams.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Thomas Greiss, Come on Down....

...You're the Next Contestant on the Back Up is Right!

I'm not sure I understand Doug Wilson's reasoning for playing musical back-ups. Whether its Patzold or Greiss, if Nabby goes down with an injury - the Sharks are most likely busted. Nabby hasn't played more than 50 games in a season since 2003-04 and he missed fifteen games last year due to injuries. I think we have to expect that Nabby isn't going to be able to handle a Brodeur type load. With Alex Auld being waived by Phoenix today, why not put in a waiver claim on him? Auld won 33 games for Vancouver in 05-06, putting up solid numbers on a decent team. Can we really judge him for his performance on two poor teams in Florida and Phoenix? Weren't people saying the same about Ozo and Roenick, two of the best players in Teal this season?

I say claim Alex Auld and let him spell Nabby. What's the risk? We have tons of cap room (9.6 million) so assuming Auld's 0.5 million is no big deal. Don't get me wrong, I'm not down on Greiss - he could be the future netminder for this organization at age 21 and he showed flashes of excellent play in the preseason - but to put the weight of the season on Patzold/Greiss if Nabby goes down is unfair to the rest of the team. At that point, Doug Wilson will have to overpay for Halak or someone else....

THE DUCKS
On a side note, did the Ducks really dump Breezy so they could deal for Brian Sutherby? Not sure I totally get it - now the Ducks have Marchant, McDonald, Pahlsson, Sutherby and Getzlaf up the middle. Is this only the first of other moves in Disneyland?

Me, the GM

I called into Teal Spiel again this past weekend, and spoke a little bit about what I think the Sharks still need. I've written about it in this space before, but now you can hear me in my eloquent glory here. Here's the embedded player again:

Comments welcome.

Douglas Murray and His Monstrous Plus-Minus

So you go over to the ESPN stats site right now, and you'll see that Douglas Murray (can't I call you Doug?) is tied for the league lead in plus-minus, at +15, tied with Chris Phillips. Holy God! That's a pretty amazing stat, given that the Sharks are +10 overall (including PP) while the Sens are +20.

I've never put a huge amount of stock in plus-minus as a purely defensive measure, because lots of things can skew it. I did an analysis once that showed that teams with a poor power play generally have players with a higher +/- than teams with a good power play. It makes sense. If you don't score on the PP, that means a higher percentage of your goals must come on even strength (ES), which boosts your +/-. Only ES and short handed goals count as a plus. And only ES and SH goals against count for a minus.

In my view, when you're rating a defensive defenseman, you really want only half of what the +/- stat give you. You want ES goals against only, because a defenseman's job is to prevent goals, not score them. If Larry gives up 20 ES goals, but they score 21 when he's on the ice, he's +1. And if Pete gives up no goals, and scores 1, he's +1, just like Larry. But Pete is a much better defensemen than Larry.

So let me start with a little factoid: Douglas Murray has not been on the ice for a even strength goal against since October 18th vs. Detroit. That means, he's been perfect for 10 games, over a month. Unbelievable.

The NHL doesn't publish this information exactly (you'd have to pore through the game logs) but luckily there are some good stats sites out there, and I turned to hockeynumbers.com. They have a stat called EH-, which is defined as "Goals against average while on ice @ even strength". They don't publish the formula, but I'm assuming it's goals per 60 minutes of time. Murray is the best on the Sharks, with an EH- of 0.3. If that means what I think it means, that's pretty astounding. Just for the record, and unsurprisingly, Alexei Semenov is the worst with an EH- of 4.1 (Kaspar is technically worse, but he only played 3 games).

So I went overboard, as I usually do, and made a spreadsheet. Here's the list of the top 10 defensemen in the NHL this year (who have played over 10 games) in EH- (and I have no idea why there's a big gap here):

Player	Games Played	EH-
Douglas Murray (SJ)	15	0.3
Petteri Nummelin (MIN)	15	0.3
Alexander Edler (VAN)	12	0.4
Mike Stuart (BOS)	18	0.9
Glen Wesley (CAR)	21	0.9
Nicklas Lidstrom (DET)	20	1.0
Marek Malik (NYR)	12	1.0
Ville Koistinen (NAS)	13	1.1
Luke Richardson (OTT)	16	1.1
Marc Staal (NYR)	20	1.2

Murray leads the league. Chris Phillips, the man who is tied with Murray at +15, is not in the top 20 (1.6). There are other factors that can skew this stat, like strength of linemates and strength of opposition, but this is a better raw stat than regular +/-. Douglas Murray has been one of the best two or three defensive defenseman in the NHL this year.

Sharks-Ducks Redux (Re-Ducks?)

Like last year, the Sharks-Ducks matchup seems to have a little extra 'oomph' than many of the other regular season games. These teams are clearly measuring themselves against each other, and like the other meeting between the two this season, they came out pretty even. I'm sure it was frustrating for the Sharks during the first half of that game because for the most part, the Ducks were shutting the Sharks down defensively.

But the Sharks didn't panic, and this is where I think the last four wins came in handy. They continued to press, didn't overskate or overpursue, and got a nice little redirect from Torrey Mitchell to tie the game at 1. Other than a couple of heart-dropping giveaways by the Sharks, it stayed pretty deadlocked. And the shootout is the shootout- the Sharks suck compared to everybody else.

So what did we learn? Not much. The Sharks and Ducks are pretty closely matched, which is what most (reasonable) people expected. When (I no longer say 'if') Niedermayer and Selanne re-join the team, that may no longer be the case. However, although both teams are a little banged up, I'd say the Sharks were more so than the Ducks, with Rivet, Michalek, and Clowe out. Ducks were missing Schnieder and Bertuzzi. Schneider hurts, but Bertuzzi is a 3rd or 4th liner now, and of limited utility.

I Can't Resist

quoting myself:

Speaking of the Ducks, they waived their backup, Ilya Bryzgalov, this morning. Grier and I agree that this is definitely a cap-clearing move for them. Given the number of other teams with goalie issues (the Coyotes among them)...

Ok, maybe it wasn't a cap-clearing move, but I love it when I'm right. And I have to point it out, since it happens so infrequently.

SOR Address

Y'know when you get into a new relationship, pretty soon you have to have that, "so what the hell are we doing?" talk. I call it the "state of the relationship" address, or SOR for short. I'm an tech guy, and three letter acronyms (TLAs, of course) dominate my daylight conversations in my corner of the cube farm.

I'm not gonna get all 'feely' with you about the blog or anything, but Girl with a Puck just did a long post about the state of hockey blogs in the raging sea of hockey journalism. And Sleek at BoC had a post on it as well. Since we at Shaved Ice are just a dingleberry on the ass of the hockey world, I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents, especially since we weren't asked.

First of all, I think hockey journalism is about informing people, and hockey blogs are about (or should be about) entertaining people. C'mon, are you going to find a dingleberry reference on tsn.ca? I'm sure that my obsession with reading hockey blogs and news does occasionally yield a post where a few of our readers learn about some story or another, but that's just luck. Largely, blogs are about analysis and opinion. Regurgitiating news is boring, and that's what RSS feeds are for.

So why the hell are you here? Most probably because you know me or Grier personally, or through some other blog. Maybe you even read us a lot, because it's pretty obvious that we both care a lot about hockey, and we care about the Sharks. I'd like to think we both have more hockey knowledge than the casual fan, and can level a critical eye at the team and the sport. We're fanboys in that we want the Sharks to do well, but we're not in that we don't mindlessly support everything the Sharks do or don't do.

And we take your crap. Journalism is inching slowly towards a more interactive model (like David Pollak's blog), but here we say what we think, and you can blast us in the comments. We always read them, and 9 times out of 10 respond back to you. If you want to click back to the go-go days of the Detroit series last year, it got a bit heated. But that's what sports fandom is all about- arguing.

To me, hockey blogs provide a jumping off point for further hockey discussion, because it's often a matter of opinion or analysis. That kind of stimulation doesn't spring from your regular hockey articles, like "Team x beat team y", or "so and so got traded". Good hockey blogs have good writing and insightful points. They make you question your assumptions about teams, players, and the game.

Or they just make you laugh through strategic use of profanity.