Hockey

Game #15 – Canucks vs. Hawks Preview: It’s Only Nostalgia Week For Us

By Sam Fels 1520 0

vs.

RECORDS: Canucks 9-3-3   Hawks 4-7-3

PUCK DROP: 7:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

THEY FILMED DEADPOOL THERE: Canucks Army

We’ve had to do this the past couple years now. Whenever the Hawks meet up with the Kings or Canucks, we have to do something of a “Remember when these mattered?” comment. This used to be the the fiercest rivalry in the league. That stopped some seven years ago. With the Kings and Hawks, there just isn’t much more to discuss because both teams are lying face down in the muck. Sadly, that might not be the case for the Canucks anymore.

The Canucks find themselves one point out of the lead for the Pacific Division, behind the Oilers and one ahead of the Coyotes, just to let you know how backwards everything is and how many different teams seem to have better ideas than the Hawks right now.

Is it real? The numbers suggest it might be. The schedule does not. The Canucks have seven regulation wins, and they’re over the Sharks at home (some teams can do that, in fact a lot of them have), the Kings twice (some teams do that), the Red Wings twice, the Rangers, and over the Panthers at home. Only the last one is a team that’s probably good and playing well at the moment. But hey, you can only play whom the schedule says you do, and the Canucks have made hay against that.

And they haven’t just squeaked by, as their metrics are pretty glowing. They’re one of the best teams in the league in terms of Corsi and expected-goals, and they’re doing some explosive work in the offensive end. Most of that comes from the top line of WHO WANTS TO WALK WITH ELIAS?-JT Miller-Brock Boeser. They’ve combined for 52 points in 15 games, with Elias Pettersson on track for a 109-point season. That’ll play.

Coach Travis Green has taken the training wheels off this line, starting them in any zone against any opponent, and pretty much doing the same with his second line centered by Bo Horvat. This has freed him up to put his plugs in more advantageous spots, which is maybe why you’ve seen scoring spikes from the likes of Brandon Sutter and Tim Schaller. What a time to be alive…to cut yourself.

That doesn’t mean Lady Luck isn’t waving her ass a bit at the Canucks, too. Again, the soft schedule helps, and they’ve ground up the chuck they’ve been served (is that how that works? Let’s just go with it). But this is a team with a 102 PDO that’s getting a .918 from Jacob Markstrom and a .938 from Thatcher Demko. The latter has been the hope for the future for what feels like 17 years now, but he’s not a .938 goalie. The Nucks are also shooting at a team-rate of 9.4% at evens, and while Pettersson and Boeser are most certainly top-level scorers, the rest of this outfit most certainly is not.

That said, they’re a top-10 specials teams outfit on both sides, with an excellent penalty kill, and with the possession they’ve gotten at evens and what they’ve done with it, you can’t really ask for any more.

And they have hope on the blue line. Somehow, and this for sure won’t last, Tyler Myers has been a possession-driving monster, with a Corsi of 56.5% while just shading most of his zone starts in the defensive zone. Should you expect that to continue? Cue Russell Westbrook:

Still, nice to have for now. That has freed up Quinn Hughes, who is going to be a thing, to take easier assignments, and he’s dinging opponents upside the head to the tune of a 57 xG% while getting third-pairing minutes and 67% of his shifts in the offensive zone. Must be nice to be able to bed in a young, dynamic d-man like that so easily. We’re looking longingly at Vancouver, folks. Eat Arby’s, puke it up, and then eat that.

Right, the to Hawks. Corey Crawford will rotate back in to the starter’s net after Lehner once again did enough to keep the Hawks from getting utterly embarrassed. This is starting to be like the end of “Little Miss Sunshine,” where Paul Dano is trying to convince Toni Collette that she has to keep Abigail Breslin from getting embarrassed by the actual pageant girls. I think Lehner is Collette in this metaphor, but I’m not entirely sure as the Hawks have basically broken my brain.

Coach Kelvin Gemstone, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to scratch one of the Hawks’ best two-way and fastest forwards tonight in Dominik Kubalik to give us more Zack Smith. Because all the kids out here with their skateboards and backwards hats have been demanding more Zack Smith. The world needs more Zack Smith. Zack Smith is the key to salvation…

…

…

…I’ve just had a brain bubble.

Everything is fucked.

Anyway, the Canucks can do pretty much whatever they want here. They can try and out-skate the Hawks, which they can. They probably have the defensive structure to use the “advanced trap,” that the Sharks used to strangle the Hawks into paste, which is just a trap but ahead of the red line. Or anything in between. And the Hawks will probably still try and dump the puck in and get it back with their not-fast-enough and not-strong-enough forwards.

I’m going to go look for a strong tree branch. You folks enjoy the game.

 

 

Hockey

Game #15 – Canucks vs. Hawks Spotlight: Come On Without…Come On Within…

By Sam Fels 1414 0

Imagine a world where a team could bring up a very promising rookie, one that was worth a top-ten pick, and play him on the third pairing, shelter him as far as zone-starts and the competition he sees, and let him hang loose on the power play where his generational skill can really shine. Imagine getting 11 points out of him in his first fourteen games, as his mistakes don’t kill you because they come against third and fourth lines.

That world exists, people. It’s just in Vancouver and not in Chicago.

Whereas Adam Boqvist essentially was tossed into the deep end full of ornery badgers (and they tend to get that way when you toss them into a pool where they don’t belong) due to his organization’s incompetence, the Canucks have allowed Quinn Hughes to land softly in the NHL and already showcase what the Canucks think will be a franchise-turning skill-set on the blue line. Oh for a different way.

Hughes has started his NHL career skating with steady-as-a-rock vet Chris Tanev in a third-pairing role. Tanev is still capable of much more, but is also the perfect centerfielder for the freelancing Hughes. As the Canucks didn’t have too many aspirations when the season started (that could be changing), they can keep Tanev in a more reserved role to develop a future star. It also helps having Edler, Myers, Benn, and Stetcher who are, at worst, representative NHL d-men. Tanev and Hughes have started 63% of their shifts in the offensive zone, keeping Hughes where he is best and letting him learn the defensive side of the game at a slower pace.

And it’s actually Tanev who has been lost without Hughes, as he has sported a sub-40% Corsi in the 40 or so minutes on the season he’s played with someone else. So clearly, Hughes is special.

And he’s shown that on the power play, where he already has eight points and one of his two goals. The top unit is being QB’d by Hughes with Pettersson, Boeser, Miller, and Horvat as the four forwards, which can be a scary one for a long time. You can see where this thing would become self-aware like the Sharks one did a couple years ago, with talented players playing together on it for season upon season until they just knew where each other was.

If you want hope for Boqvist through Hughes, keep in mind they’re just about the same size. Hughes is listed at 5-10 and 170, which is generous to the hilt. And as the years roll on, the Canucks will expect him to displace Alex Edler on the top pairing. But they don’t need him to now, as things are going well and expectations within the organization–except for ownership which is kind of a problem–are tempered.

The future looks bright in Vancouver, if they can keep owner Aquilini out of hockey side of the business too much. Something they’ve failed to do for a while now. Acquilini has never given in on doing a full rebuild, trying to do half of one while also trying to compete for playoff spots, which has handcuffed the Canucks for half a decade now. It’s why they have some unconscionable contracts on their books to the likes of Eriksson, Sutter, Roussel, and now Myers while actually producing a promising young core of Pettersson, Boeser, and Hughes. It feels like it could keep them from going in any direction.

Still, within the next two seasons they could probably free themselves up from Tanev, Edler, Eriksson, Pearson, and Sutter’s revival might make him marketable as well. Then the Canucks would really have room to boost their future. A future in which Hughes looks like he’ll be driving.

Hockey

Game #15 – Canucks vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Muggers, Buggerers, Bushwhackers

By Sam Fels 1303 0

Alex Edler – We’re really stretching here (not Troy Stetcher-ing…we’ll show ourselves out), but the Canucks just aren’t the grouping of fuckwits you used to know and…well, know. So we’ll go with Captain Elbows here, who never met a hit he couldn’t leap into like Quinn the Eskimo just got here. Edler has been getting away with this crap for years, and perhaps one day he’ll miss and turn into shards on the boards and we’ll finally be vindicated. Probably not, though.

Tyler Myers – At least the Canucks have kept up tradition in having a big, doofus defenseman on their roster whom they will massively overpay for years. Sure, Myers is playing well now. It started well in Buffalo and Winnipeg, too. Then he gets bored with his defensive responsibilities, convinces himself he’s the big blond dork version of Paul Coffey and goes cowboy-ing his way all over the ice while the opponents gleefully and perhaps disbelievingly gallop into the spaces he’s supposed to be in but is ignoring. You’ll see, garbage-throwers and shit-ass rioters. You’ll see.

Jordie Benn – If he ever shaves, he’ll be out of the league within seven minutes.

Hockey

Game #15 – Canucks vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

By Sam Fels 1221 0

Canucks

Notes: Pettersson started nearly 70% of his shifts in the o-zone last year but that has dipped of late, despite what that number says. Still, they’ve been one of the most dominant lines in hockey…Horvat’s production has mostly been on the power play but expect him to do damage at evens before too long…Adam Gaudette is good enough for their second line but his main running buddy in college isn’t good enough to beat out Zack Smith or Andrew Shaw right now and is in Rockford. Life is grand…Sutter is having a revival season now that they’re no longer using him as some kind of Jordan Staal/checking type and just support scoring…

Notes: Yep, Kubalik is scratched for Zack Smith. Just let that marinate…we’ve got nothing else to say….

Hockey

Angry At Numbers – The First Month

By Sam Fels 1702 0

I guess it’s the first month. We’re through the first week of November now really and the season started in the first week of October, so let’s just go with that. Anyway, time for us to look at some numbers, and then beyond that to the meaning of the numbers, and then decide the numbers have no meaning.

60.3/2.66

That’s the Hawks Corsi-against per 60 minutes at even-strength, and their expected-goals-against per 60 this season. The first is the third-worst mark in the league. The second is the second-worst. And both are either worse or exactly the same as last season. I’m going to get more heavily into this when we record the podcast tonight (so tune in! promotion!), but clearly this is not what’s supposed to happen. The acquisitions of Calvin de Haan and Olli Maatta were specifically to keep this from happening. And it hasn’t happened. There are reasons for this, and again, podcast tonight we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of it. But this isn’t the sign of a team moving forward. And this isn’t a team adapting to a new style again, because as we all know at this point…MAGIC TRAINING CAMP. This is just who they are, which is a team that essentially never has the puck and is giving up not just a lot of attempts but a lot of good ones as well.

Now, these numbers will calm down shortly because October hockey is very open while everyone establishes position and then it calms down when everyone gets bored. But still, fresh out of camp this is not what anyone thought we would see, at least inside the building.

52.8/2.15

And these are the “for” numbers in the same category, which are both down from last year. And again, this is October when things are more open and offense should be easier to find. You can find all sorts of mitigating factors here, but I would pin this on Jonathan Toews being a ghost most of the season, mismatched lines every game, and the lack of any puck-moving d-men now that Erik Gustafsson isn’t sort of pretending to be one anymore (more on him in a second). We accepted long ago that the Hawks wouldn’t be good defensively, but we thought it might be ok, or at least entertaining, because they would create a lot, too. But they don’t. They’re a middling offense in these terms. And I guess we’re starting to see that last year’s offense was more the product of individual brilliance from Kane, Top Cat, and Toews, than anything structural. Which we already kind of knew but tried to be in denial about. Well, Toews and DeBrincat haven’t been at that level, and here’s what you get.

+4.3/+3.95

Those are Duncan Keith’s relative marks in Corsi-percentage and expected-goals percentage, which are miles above what he’s been the past four seasons. The first mark would be the best of his career in fact, though a large part of that is due to the Hawks being a so much worse even-strength and possession team now. It’s hard to be that far above the mark when your team is at 55%-58% as the Hawks were once upon a time. Same with the xG% as well.

Still, Keith has done this with a variety of partners as we’ve seen, and it was fair to question if he still could or if he still even wanted to.

The problem is that Keith is averaging more than a minute at even-strength more of time than he has since 2012 (!) and overall is averaging more than two minutes per game than last year. Yes, we all know about Keith’s freakish physical endurance but he’s still 36. This can’t really continue.

46.1/41.7

This is where I really get frustrated with the analytic community. There was some cry from them when Jeremy Colliton scratched Erik Gustafsson in Los Angeles. Garbage like this:

The above numbers are Erik Gustaffson’s CF% and xG% this year, which are terrible. And yes, if you were to blend them with all 82 games from last year, his numbers would still look good compared to the rest of the defense. Because that was 82 games of sample and this was 11. And yet anyone who has actually watched Gus this year knows he’s looked a lot like that campsite after the Pikers leave in Snatch.

Secondly, you have to take all of these numbers with a grain of salt, because hockey analytics has yet to weight these things with zone starts. Or they haven’t in a way I’ve seen, and feel free to show me on Twitter. Gustafsson started 60% of his shifts in the offensive zone last year. Same as this year. It’s actually harder to give up more chances and attempts against that way, because of the distance you’d have to travel.

Sure, winning faceoffs and the type of forechecking forwards who are there play into it as well, but the numbers on Gus don’t tell the whole story. Watching him, you know he doesn’t get you from one zone to the other, at least the right way. He’s too slow. He’s a decent passer, but rarely can open the space up for himself to do that. His skill, at least from dim memory, is making things happen when you’re already in the offensive zone. And that has value, but it’s not the same as being a puck-mover.

This is not a “WATCH THE GAME, NERDS” decree, but it becomes rather obvious when you’re not watching the games at all. Yes, their arguments would be that 11 games this year shouldn’t outweigh the 82 from last year because one suggests more what the player Gustafsson is. But how many games does a coach need to wait before officially confirming his player is playing like horseshit? 15? 20? To me, Gus was that bad and his scratching totally justified.

We can blend our stats and our eyes, people.

Hockey

Game #14 – You’re So Very Ordinary, You’re So Very Lame. Tastes Like Whiskey On Your Lips And Earthworms Rule Your Brain – Hawks 2, Sharks 4

By John Pullega 2119 0

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

Corsica

When you pine for Marc Crawford to release you from the genital vise that is Blackhawks hockey, it’s safe to say the goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain. Fire everyone.

– Going into this game, the Sharks were the worst team in the West. They had lost five in a row. Martin Jones had a sub .900 save percentage. Through the first two periods, the Hawks managed eight (8) shots on goal. They had a 29+ CF%. McClure summed it up best:

The Hawks managed 14 shot ATTEMPTS against the team with the third worst overall goaltending in the league solely because DeBoer has strangled their transition. That’s a competent coach masking deficiencies against someone he knows will not have a strategy to counter. –@Matt_McClure_

Once again, Jeremy Colliton has shown that when the going gets tough, he gets his ass paddled red. Only this time, he doesn’t have the cover of saying, “Well, it was the Predators.” This was the worst team in the West completely annihilating whatever it is that Jeremy Colliton thinks is a strategy.

The Hawks gathered just three of eight points on this road swing. Fine, the Predators are good. But they also played the Kings, a team that should be relegated and is now officially the worst in the West; the Ducks without John Gibson; and the Sharks, the former worst team in the West before tonight. And they managed just three points. Embarrassing and unacceptable for a win-now team.

– Robin Lehner at least kept it close for as long as he could again. The first two goals were hardly his fault. On the first, a bad bounce off Maatta’s skate led the puck directly to Timo Meier, who ricocheted a shot off Patrick Marleau’s skate. There’s not a ton Seabrook could have done to prevent that, aside from beating Marleau to the inside and keeping him entirely out of the crease, but if you’re counting on that, you might be Staniel Bowman or Jeremy Colliton, and if so, please resign.

On the second, an unfortunate bounce over Adam Boqvist’s stick at the blue line gave Evander “The Other Huge Piece of Shit” Kane a shorthanded breakaway.

Lehner probably could have had the third goal, but given everything he’s had to put up with over the last week, I’m not going to rag on him too much. Can you imagine this team without him right now?

– The Sharks crushed the Hawks in any sort of transition they tried to make. It’s remarkable that the Hawks are both too slow and too lithe to dump and chase, but boy did they ever try. This is the Colliton offensive system. For fuck’s sake, this team finished in the top 10 in goals scored last year. Without the happenstance two-goal wet dream the Hawks managed to fart out at the end of this farce, Colliton is facing down a shutout against Martin motherfucking Jones.

Perhaps worst of all his Colliton’s stringent adherence to the drop pass on the PP. In the second period, with a defender draped all over him, Adam Boqvist tried a drop pass at neutral ice. He was actively looking for someone behind him, which indicates that this was drawn up. Rather than giving your 18-year-old, fast, dynamic D-man a chance to shove the puck up an equally slow team’s asshole, Colliton wants his team to do drop passes. How progressive and forward thinking of this fucking wiener.

– Did you know that Andrew Shaw leads the team in hits, and that matters about as much as how long your foreskin is? If Colliton is still somehow the coach for this team on Thursday, you better bet your ass he’s going to be on the top line, because he happened to be on the Toews–Saad line for the Hawks’s first goal. Super glad he’s back to contribute exactly dick to whatever this year is supposed to be.

– Before anyone adheres to the inevitable DEY BADDLED BACK FROM DA JAWS OF DEFEAT MY FRENTS narrative that Coach Gemstone will rely on to keep his job in his next press conference, keep in mind that the Sharks had given up five goals in each of three of their last four games. And that Martin Jones, again, had a sub .900 save percentage going into it. This isn’t battling back. This is exploiting a bad goaltender whose coach put them in the prevent defense. As any football fan can tell you, prevent defense prevents wins.

– Although Boqvist couldn’t catch Piece of Shit Kane II on the breakaway, he did manage to pull of a nice shimmy shot late in the third. The kid’s got wheels and a wicked wrister. He ought to be playing more time than all of Gus, Seabrook, and de Haan, who each had more TOI than him.

– Reminder that the Hawks could have traded Erik Gustafsson at any point during the off-season and didn’t.

– I would like to hear more of Patrick Sharp talking about “hard dumps” and “hard rims” during each intermission.

At the very least, Jeremy Colliton should be out on his ass by Christmas. His systems (if you can call them that, and I assure you I don’t, because I call them wet dogshit) don’t fit the personnel. Likewise, Bowman needs to be on his ass no later than the end of the year. He put this team together to win this year, and the best hope they have is winning the lottery.

Fire everyone. Start over.

Beer du Jour: Bulleit, Maker’s Mark, and High Life

Line of the Night: “They’re just skating all over the ice not getting much accomplished.” –Patrick Sharp

Hockey

Game #14 – Hawks vs. Sharks Preview: What Are You Doing Down Here?

By Sam Fels 1493 0

vs.

RECORDS: Hawks 4-6-3  Sharks 4-10-1

PUCK DROP: 9pm

TV: NBCSN Chicago

THE BUBBLE BURST: Just follow @ItWasThreeZero, but it’s a little blue

I bet you didn’t think that a month into the season, we’d be sitting here with the Hawks with more points than the Sharks. And yet, that’s where we are. It has all gone pear-shaped on the Teal, while this is pretty much what the Hawks are. Is this what the Sharks are? They’d better hope not, because they have a lot of money committed to not be.

There isn’t one clear reason that the Sharks are currently using circles of paper. They tried to solve their goaltending issues from last year, which were some of the worst on recent record, by simply hoping that Martin Jones would become what he had been the previous three years through simply kindness from the gods. That has not happened, as he and Aaron Dell have been just about as bad as they were last year. But this time around, that’s not the only problem.

While the Sharks are one of the better teams in the league in the amount of attempts they give up, they’re one of the worst in the types of chances they give up. Quite frankly, their defense is Cottonnelle-esque. You might not be down in their end all that much but when you are you can get to the prime areas easily and fire away.

On top of that, the Sharks just aren’t generating nearly as much as they were, both in terms of attempts and chances. Erik Karlsson isn’t the engine he was, either through age or injury or still trying to find him the right partner. And the Sharks’ depth has eroded. It wasn’t just the departure of Pavelski. Valuable seat-fillers like Joonas Donskoi and Gustav Nyquist also made for the exits, and the kids that have come into replace them just haven’t lived up yet. They’ve needed more from the likes of Marcus Sorensen and Melker Karlsson and they haven’t got it.

That doesn’t mean their vets are off the hook. Logan Couture has been woeful, Joe Thornton can only do so much, and their half-court shot of bringing Patrick Marleau back has only revealed that he might not have a pulse. If Evander Kane and Kevin LeBanc weren’t scoring, they’d probably already be done. On the back end, they’ve missed Justin Braun, which is probably akin to missing Connor Murphy. Good player, adds to your team, shouldn’t pivot around him. Marc-Eduoard Vlasic is doing a fine Seabrook impression these days and is on the third-pairing.

What they can do about it is questionable. They obviously need a goalie if they’re going to make anything of this season, but by the time they can identify one they can have they might already be toast. They’re all the way capped out, so how they’d cram in a veteran goalie and/or a forward or two is a mystery. They’d have to get Martin Jones off the roster as a starter, but the line of teams willing to pick up a goalie who now resides in a bucket and has to be put there via damp sponge isn’t all that long. They don’t have much else to shift.

This is a team built for now, and the now is passing them by. Look for a big move, even beyond firing coach Pete DeBoer, if this continues much longer.

To the Hawks. They were mostly ok against the Ducks, so you can probably look for the same lineup aside from Crawford swapping in for Lehner, The former had his first really good game against the Kings, and even still that saw him give up four goals. The Hawks will need to get both goalies going at top speed if they’re going to make a run, or just turn to Lehner full-time which is another headache they don’t need.

The Sharks are one of the few teams that can’t leave severe windburn on the Hawks. They used to be able to dominate them by just having the puck all the time, but they aren’t doing that either right now. Both teams let you get wherever you want in their defensive zone, so this one will have chances and likely goals. The only known threat from the Sharks right now is the Hertl-Kane axis, so if Jeremy Colliton wants to get cute he can keep changing on the fly to get Kampf out there against them. But that might be a bit adventurous for the first week in November.

It might not have been pretty, but if the Hawks can get this one that’s five points on this trip which is one below the max. And that would be good, even if a total mirage given the method. They need anything they can build on right now. And right now, the Sharks are a very fragile team that you can fill with head-goblins early in the game. Then again, the Sharks probably think the Hawks are the slump-buster they need. Catch the fever.

Hockey

Game #14 – Hawks vs. Sharks Spotlight: Logan Is Finding Out What It Feels Like

By Sam Fels 1295 0

Over the summer, the Sharks made a pretty big call. Their usual M.O. has been to just strip their captain of the position when their season flamed out before they felt it should. Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau both felt the sting of that particular whip, with the former taking over for the latter and then Joe Pavelski taking it from Jumbo Joe. And then everyone would pretend everything was fine, in true Canadian fashion.

This time around, the Sharks just let their captain toddle off somewhere else. In order to fit other salaries and make room for some more kids, the Sharks let Pavelski walk to Dallas, and bestowed the “C” onto Logan Couture. It has been an ill-fit, shall we say.

Couture has been the biggest example of how the old and not-all-that-quick Sharks have struggled to recover from their long playoff run last year. Whereas last season you could argue they were only undone by the league’s worst goaltending, because the rest of their measurements were some of the league’s best. If they’d even had representative goaltending, they probably walk out of the Western Conference last year. And we’ll never forgive them for not doing so and saddling us with this cloud of despair.

The question-existence-entirely goaltending is still there, but the dominant process has gone away with it. The Sharks don’t have the puck nearly as much as they did, they aren’t creating as much as they did, they give up a whole lot more than they did, and Couture is at the center of it.

Couture has been crossed by some fiendish PDO treachery. He’s shooting below 7% at evens and 3% overall. But he’s also not getting to the spots he used to that would drive that shooting-percentage up dramatically to career norms. His shots per 60 are down a third at evens, his attempts down a quarter, and his individual expected-goals are half of what they were last year. Throw in the power play time and things look better, and that 3% number will go up. But the Sharks need serious help at evens and he’s not providing it.

His possession numbers stink, too. Couture has always been something of a high-event player, but he mostly kept those events to the other end even if he was on the ice for a decent amount of attempts and chances against. You live with decent amount against when a player gets a ton for. Well, the second part hasn’t happened this season, and now Couture is just a player who’s on the ice for a lot of chances against. Not good.

How much of this is due to the absence of Pavelski? Couture has seen him replaced with Patrick Marleau for the most part, who just might be clinically dead. Timo Meier is still the main running buddy, as he was with Pavelski and Couture last year. So if only on that limited evidence, Pavelski has been a big miss (and while Pavelski’s individual numbers in Dallas are down, his overall possession numbers are still very good).

So far this year, Couture has only found success with Tomas Hertl, but the Sharks would be bunching up their two biggest threats that way as well as weakening themselves down the middle, which has almost always been their strength. Joe Thornton isn’t taking on #2 center assignments at age 93. Quite simply, the Sharks aren’t as deep as they once were and they don’t have enough wingers to go around.

Perhaps as the year progresses, a couple of their kids can step up like Lean Bergmann or Dylan Gambrell. But it seems like an awfully big ask for neophytes to immediately take roles for what’s supposed to be a Cup contender. The Sharks might have to swing another trade, which will only kneecap their future even further.

The Sharks were always a bit up against it given their collective age. They don’t have one core piece under 30, other than Meier and Hertl. The kids haven’t caught up. But they couldn’t have expected it to catch up this quickly, and neither could Couture. But yet, here they are.