Speculation: Summer 2018 Roster Discussion Part IV

[Roasted Nuts]

Id really like to see Miere develope chemistry with Hertl this year. I'd like to see them start building something together for the future. Each brings different skill sets to the table. Let Kane run with the Joe's. Drop Donskoi to the 3rd line..
kane,joe,joe
logan,hertl,miere
leBlanc, tierney,donskoi
rookie-Sorenson-rookie
Bottom 6 wouldn't be a liability. The 4th line would be very interesting.. A rotation of Radil, Gambrell, Suomela, Praplan with Sorenson would give them playing time and might be beneficial. maybe someone jumps leblanc on the 3rd line? Or Tierney.

I think Hertl and Meier on the same line would be tough to play against, but that line doesn't have a playmaker to jump start scoring. Hertl and Meier chip in goals around the net, but aren't necessarily good passers. Couture doesn't fit the bill as he's only great at goal scoring. I would like to see someone with offensive acumen like Jumbo, Pavs, or even Labanc to center the line.

 

[Barrie22]

If the sharks can't have a good year. All i hope for is thornton to be healthy enough yo have a 64 point season. 50 assists and 14 goals.

The 50 assists would move him into 7th all time in assists and the 64 points would move him up to 14th all time in points.

 

[niel094]

Now I want to take a stab at this,

Kane-Pavelski- donskoi
Couture-Hertl-labanc
Meier-Thornton-suomela
Sorensen-tierney-goodrow

Also it’s clear that heed won’t be utilized on defense as anything more than a spare part. Why not give the kid a shot at being a winger?

 

[spintops]

Kane - Thornton - Pavs (because this is going to happen)
Meier - Hertl - Couture (call whoever you want the C, I am in the minority that thinks this would work)
Donkey - Tierney - Labanc (can see this line having trouble some games, contributing good scoring others)
Sorenson - C - Melker (Melker is making the team and playing , even if he should be #13)

 

[DG93]

Kane - Thornton - Pavs (because this is going to happen)
Meier - Hertl - Couture (call whoever you want the C, I am in the minority that thinks this would work)
Donkey - Tierney - Labanc (can see this line having trouble some games, contributing good scoring others)
Sorenson - C - Melker (Melker is making the team and playing , even if he should be #13)

Tierney and Labanc are so bad together. I'd switch Labanc and Meier. Also, unfortunately, I agree about Melker playing. I would assume the 4C is Suomela considering he chose SJ over a lot of other teams, so he's probably the favorite for that spot.

 

[Fistfullofbeer]

This has been a boring off-season. Mainly because there is way too much talk/speculation with players like Pacioretty, Skinner, Karlsson, etc. being trade bait and nothing happening.

October won't come quick enough.

 

[hohosaregood]

If Melker starts the season poorly, I bet DW looks at moving him like he's done with guys like Wingels.

 

[Dicdonya]

Kane - Thornton - Pavs (because this is going to happen)
Meier - Hertl - Couture (call whoever you want the C, I am in the minority that thinks this would work)
Donkey - Tierney - Labanc (can see this line having trouble some games, contributing good scoring others)
Sorenson - C - Melker (Melker is making the team and playing , even if he should be #13)

Line 1- Its gunna happen, at least to start the year
Line 2- It will work fine, even though I think I'm in the minority who does not like Hertl/Cooch together, and thinks they are not great together. However that line still would have 3 great players on it, and that alone will work well enough not to be a hindrance to the team if need be.
Line 3- I think that line will be great honestly. Donskoi carries the possession for Tierney, Labanc helps their scoring.
Line 4- Eh whatever its a 4th line. Just find whichever mix of players work, we have enough potential 4th line candidates to get something that gels.

Tierney and Labanc are so bad together. I'd switch Labanc and Meier. Also, unfortunately, I agree about Melker playing. I would assume the 4C is Suomela considering he chose SJ over a lot of other teams, so he's probably the favorite for that spot.

Tieney and Labanc are bad defensively together, but Donskoi and Tierney are great together. That line has potential to actually work very well. Labanc cannot play with Hertl/Cooch if Deboer intends to give them shutdown minutes. If they're given more offensive minutes, like 50-50 split, Labanc would be great with them.

I actually think Karlsson could start as the 13th forward. There is no doubt he makes the team at least, but based on how poorly he played last year, if some of these prospects really stand out, I could see him not getting dressed quite a bit this year.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

I think that we will go into the season with this:

Kane-Thornton-Pavelski
Hertl-Couture-LaBanc
Meier-Tierney-Donskoi
Sorensen-C-Karlsson

Tough to predict who the #4C will be...also possible we see Karlsson or Goodrow or somebody else traded. But I think they will start LaBanc with Hertl and Couture.

Historically, in his time in the NHL, the organization has started LaBanc in positions to succeed and then quickly taken them away from him after his effectiveness in those positions trails off.

 

[Alwalys]

I said this prior to Toronto signing Tavares, but the Sharks may have dodged a bullet. If you look at championship-caliber teams, they have the very best talent. Is that what Tavares is? Or is he more top-10 forward than top-5 forward?

Look at the high end forwards that have driven Cup-winning teams in recent years: Staal, Getzlaf, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Crosby, Malkin, Toews, Kane, Bergeron, Kopitar, Ovechkin, and Kuznetsov. Other than Staal, who had a tremendous outlier season, those are players who were consistently great. How does Tavares compare? He's better than Kuznetsov, 2007 Getzlaf, and 2013 Toews; you could make a case for Bergeron that I wouldn't buy, but I can see the argument.

Even given Bergeron, those players played with other consistent world-class players. Pronger and Niedermayer were approximately the 2nd and 3rd best defenseman in the game; Giguere was a top-3 goaltender. Kane was probably the 2nd- or 3rd-best winger in the game and Keith a top-3 defenseman. Chara was a top-3 defenseman and Thomas perhaps the best goaltender at the time. Kuznetsov *only* played with the best winger in the game.

Maybe the Sharks could go with Washington's model, but I'm not sure if Tavares can really be that foundational superstar who can go up against the cream of the crop, or the ultimate, ultimate complementary player who can do damage once the top guns have knocked each other. "Settling" on Tavares as your #1 center would be a repeat of the Sharks going for Dan Boyle (or arguably, Joe Thornton) instead of waiting for the actual winning ingredient.

I don't know. Perhaps I'm being biased. Maybe if the Sharks had signed Tavares I'd be doing a spiel about how Tavares could be just as good as those players and have a preternatural playoff performance like Kuznetsov had this year or Staal had in 2006. Thoughts?

Joe Thornton will never, ever be arguable for this.

 

[Maladroit]

Joe Thornton will never, ever be arguable for this.

Yeah that's an insane statement. Thornton in his prime was better than all the listed "high end forwards" were in their primes except Crosby and Ovechkin.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Yeah that's an insane statement. Thornton in his prime was better than all the listed "high end forwards" were in their primes except Crosby and Ovechkin.

In the regular season, for sure. But in the playoffs, not so much.

 

[Maladroit]

In the regular season, for sure. But in the playoffs, not so much.

Well if we're looking at playoffs in isolation then Danny Briere and Jake Guentzel are superstars. It's a miniscule sample and Thornton still comes out on par with Kopitar and Toews and ahead of Bergeron if you look at his playoff points per game as a Shark. If the Kings and Hawks can combine for five Cups with their No. 1 centers scoring 0.84 and 0.86 points per game in the playoffs respectively the Sharks should have been able to win at least one with Thornton scoring 0.84. The supporting cast, especially the goaltending, was just never good enough when it mattered.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Well if we're looking at playoffs in isolation then Danny Briere and Jake Guentzel are superstars. It's a miniscule sample and Thornton still comes out on par with Kopitar and Toews and ahead of Bergeron if you look at his playoff points per game as a Shark.

Right, but his defensive performance isn’t on par with what those guys did in their top seasons. Thornton is a significantly better regular season producer than Bergeron, Kopitar, and Toews. In the playoffs, they grow a lot closer, while Thornton typically gets crushed in his matchups and those guys tend to win their matchups.

 

[Maladroit]

Right, but his defensive performance isn’t on par with what those guys did in their top seasons. Thornton is a significantly better regular season producer than Bergeron, Kopitar, and Toews. In the playoffs, they grow a lot closer, while Thornton typically gets crushed in his matchups and those guys tend to win their matchups.

Thornton has historically been deployed much differently than those three players but I'd love to know which matchups he's lost in the playoffs on the basis of shots or scoring chances. When it comes to goals, sure, but that's largely because Nabokov and Niemi were postseason trainwrecks for years on end.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Thornton has historically been deployed much differently than those three players but I'd love to know which matchups he's lost in the playoffs on the basis of shots or scoring chances. When it comes to goals, sure, but that's largely because Nabokov and Niemi were postseason trainwrecks for years on end.

Thornton lost the following matchups in 5V5 GF:

Brad Richards 2008 1-2 (40 minutes)*
Ryan Getzlaf 2009 2-5 (54 minutes)*
Paul Stastny 2010 1-4 (52 minutes)*
Dave Bolland 2010 1-2 (44 minutes) *
Zetterberg 2011 1-4 (65 minutes)*
Kesler 2011 0-1 (34 minutes)
Kopitar 2014 0-3 (29 minutes)*
Crosby 2016 0-2 (42 minutes)*

Asterisk means he lost in at least one of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%. Red means he lost in at least three of CF% FF%, SF%, and SCF%. Bolded means he lost in every single one of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%.

Thornton was on the ice for 6 5V5 goals in 360 minutes of 5V5 hockey in these matchups. That’s an average 5V5 GF/60 of exactly 1.0 which is putrid for a center whose 5V5 P/60 ranged between 1.67 and 2.83 P/60 between these regular seasons and that’s not something you can place any sort of blame on Nabokov or Niemi for. 360 minutes in different series against different opponents with different linemates is also plenty enough of a sample size for me to say Thornton, the best player, regular season career wise, in every single matchup besides Crosby, is the primary reason for his own 5V5 GF/60 being so hideously low.

Thornton played 13 playoff series during those seasons and lost 8 of his matchups in GF%, 7 of those 8 in one of CF%, FF%, SF%, or SCF%, and 4 of those 8 in 3 of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%.

I can promise you that if you pull up Toews, Kopitar, and Bergeron’s head-to-head matchup numbers in the playoffs, you will find something very different; specifically in the goals for column.

With some added context in certain areas, perhaps these numbers don’t all look as disgusting as they currently do. Perhaps But, for a #1C who consistently dominated CF%, FF%, SF%, SCF%, and GF% in the regular season, and scored a ton of points, his playoff CF%, FF%, SF%, SCF%, and GF% in these head to head matchups, along with his production, is just not up to par whatsoever. And it’s not at #1C level.

 

[Juxtaposer]

Thornton has historically been deployed much differently than those three players but I'd love to know which matchups he's lost in the playoffs on the basis of shots or scoring chances. When it comes to goals, sure, but that's largely because Nabokov and Niemi were postseason trainwrecks for years on end.

Yeah, deployed in much more cushy assignments than Kopitar, Bergeron, and Toews and put up significantly worse defensive results.

I really don’t know how you can possibly compare Thornton to those guys. Anze Kopitar put up exactly a point per game in each of his team’s Cup runs. Bergeron put up 20 in 23 in his Cup run and was a whopping +15; I don’t care how good Thomas was (historically good), goaltending alone cannot account for that number. And Jonathan Toews put up 29 points in 22 games in his team’s first Cup. Joe Thornton has put up one performance even close to those ones in his 16 years of playoff runs, and if you try to tell me that Martin Jones was the reason that the Sharks didn’t win a Cup that year, I’ll scream.

You cannot look at a player with a 0.96 regular season point per game average and a 0.76 playoffs point per game average and tell me he has put up Cup-winning #1C caliber playoff performances. He played quite literally two seasons in his whole SJ career as a tough minutes center as well. I love Joe Thornton to the moon and back, but he has never been good enough in the playoffs for the Sharks to win a Cup. Sure, Nabakov and Niemi were the main culprits, but Thornton wasn’t much better. The Kings won a Cup with Quick putting up a 0.911 save percentage. And the Hawks won a Cup with frickin’ Antti Niemi himself. Good enough skaters can overcome bad goaltending.

 

[Maladroit]

Thornton lost the following matchups in 5V5 GF:

Brad Richards 2008 1-2 (40 minutes)*
Ryan Getzlaf 2009 2-5 (54 minutes)*
Paul Stastny 2010 1-4 (52 minutes)*
Dave Bolland 2010 1-2 (44 minutes) *
Zetterberg 2011 1-4 (65 minutes)*
Kesler 2011 0-1 (34 minutes)
Kopitar 2014 0-3 (29 minutes)*
Crosby 2016 0-2 (42 minutes)*

Asterisk means he lost in at least one of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%. Red means he lost in at least three of CF% FF%, SF%, and SCF%. Bolded means he lost in every single one of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%.

Thornton was on the ice for 6 5V5 goals in 360 minutes of 5V5 hockey in these matchups. That’s an average 5V5 GF/60 of exactly 1.0 which is putrid for a center whose 5V5 P/60 ranged between 1.67 and 2.83 P/60 between these regular seasons and that’s not something you can place any sort of blame on Nabokov or Niemi for. 360 minutes in different series against different opponents with different linemates is also plenty enough of a sample size for me to say Thornton, the best player, regular season career wise, in every single matchup besides Crosby, is the primary reason for his own 5V5 GF/60 being so hideously low.

Thornton played 13 playoff series during those seasons and lost 8 of his matchups in GF%, 7 of those 8 in one of CF%, FF%, SF%, or SCF%, and 4 of those 8 in 3 of CF%, FF%, SF%, and SCF%.

I can promise you that if you pull up Toews, Kopitar, and Bergeron’s head-to-head matchup numbers in the playoffs, you will find something very different; specifically in the goals for column.

With some added context in certain areas, perhaps these numbers don’t all look as disgusting as they currently do. Perhaps But, for a #1C who consistently dominated CF%, FF%, SF%, SCF%, and GF% in the regular season, and scored a ton of points, his playoff CF%, FF%, SF%, SCF%, and GF% in these head to head matchups, along with his production, is just not up to par whatsoever. And it’s not at #1C level.

Thank you for doing the legwork, this is important info to have. But like you said we're talking about 360 minutes here. Assuming around 15 even strength minutes a game this is around 24 games of work. That's an insignificant sample size in hockey, not just for goals but for any stat you can measure. I know fans tend to want explanations for playoff disappointments that range beyond random luck but 99% of the time that's really all it comes down to when you're dealing with samples this tiny. It's useful to look at the granular data like this for descriptive purposes but not for anything beyond that.

Yeah, deployed in much more cushy assignments than Kopitar, Bergeron, and Toews and put up significantly worse defensive results.

I really don’t know how you can possibly compare Thornton to those guys. Anze Kopitar put up exactly a point per game in each of his team’s Cup runs. Bergeron put up 20 in 23 in his Cup run and was a whopping +15; I don’t care how good Thomas was (historically good), goaltending alone cannot account for that number. And Jonathan Toews put up 29 points in 22 games in his team’s first Cup. Joe Thornton has put up one performance even close to those ones in his 16 years of playoff runs, and if you try to tell me that Martin Jones was the reason that the Sharks didn’t win a Cup that year, I’ll scream.

You cannot look at a player with a 0.96 regular season point per game average and a 0.76 playoffs point per game average and tell me he has put up Cup-winning #1C caliber playoff performances. He played quite literally two seasons in his whole SJ career as a tough minutes center as well. I love Joe Thornton to the moon and back, but he has never been good enough in the playoffs for the Sharks to win a Cup. Sure, Nabakov and Niemi were the main culprits, but Thornton wasn’t much better. The Kings won a Cup with Quick putting up a 0.911 save percentage. And the Hawks won a Cup with frickin’ Antti Niemi himself. Good enough skaters can overcome bad goaltending.

I'm not saying goaltending is the only reason the Sharks have never won a Cup, it's just the main reason and a much bigger factor than Thornton underperforming his regular season results. That's great that Kopitar was a point per game in his team's Cup runs but Thornton put up a point per game in 2007, 2011 and 2016 too. We just ran into vastly superior teams in 07 and 16 and then Niemi was an absolute turd in 2011 with a .896 playoff SV% (and we still got to the conference finals! God he was awful). That year, Bergeron had a 0.957 on-ice SV% in the playoffs while Thornton's was .895 - of course one was +15 and lifted the Cup while the other was -5. You're discounting Thornton's excellent playoff runs that came up short for reasons that have nothing to do with Thornton.

Yes the Kings won with Quick throwing up a .911. That's entirely because Niemi was godawful in the first round. If he puts up even a .900 SV% in that series we get the fourth win, beat the Kings and possibly lift the Stanley Cup. Sure the Hawks won with Niemi but that had way less to do with Toews outperforming Thornton than it did with that Hawks team having Keith-Seabrook as its top pairing while ours was Vlasic and an over the hill Blake, not to mention prime Sharp and Hossa on their second line vs. Pavelski and Setoguchi or prime Ladd and Bolland on their third line vs. Torrey Mitchell and Manny Malhotra.

Thornton gets way too much of the blame for the Sharks' playoff disappointments when no one non-goaltender player can really make that much of a difference in hockey. He's had his struggles in the playoffs, especially back in his Boston days when he played through cracked ribs, but a 0.84 points per game rate from your #1 center over a decade should be sufficient to win a Cup if the rest of the team is good enough. It hasn't been.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Thornton is actually a very, very good example of why trying to win without tanking is a bad idea.

Since the Sharks traded for Thornton, nobody has acquired a player of Thornton’s caliber outside of the draft. That was 13 years ago, and he was only made available because he had serious flaws; those flaws being leadership and playoff performance. In 13 years as a Shark, the primary reason that he never won a Stanley Cup is because his playoff performances were never up to par.

When a player who is #1C or #1D caliber is made available anywhere outside of the draft, it is almost certainly because that player has significant flaws that other #1C or #1D caliber guys don’t.

Guys like Seguin, Tavares, Seth Jones, Burns, Dougie Hamilton, Kovalchuk, Panarin - the best players acquired outside of the draft in the past decade - how do they compare to Toews, Kane, Keith, Bergeron, Chara, Kopitar, Doughty, Crosby, Malkin, Kuznetsov, Backstrom, and Ovechkin? Moreover, how do their playoff performances compare? And how do the centers - the most important position in hockey - compare?

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Thank you for doing the legwork, this is important info to have. But like you said we're talking about 360 minutes here. Assuming around 15 even strength minutes a game this is around 24 games of work. That's an insignificant sample size in hockey, not just for goals but for any stat you can measure. I know fans tend to want explanations for playoff disappointments that range beyond random luck but 99% of the time that's really all it comes down to when you're dealing with samples this tiny. It's useful to look at the granular data like this for descriptive purposes but not for anything beyond that.



I'm not saying goaltending is the only reason the Sharks have never won a Cup, it's just the main reason and a much bigger factor than Thornton underperforming his regular season results. That's great that Kopitar was a point per game in his team's Cup runs but Thornton put up a point per game in 2007, 2011 and 2016 too. We just ran into vastly superior teams in 07 and 16 and then Niemi was an absolute turd in 2011 with a .896 playoff SV% (and we still got to the conference finals! God he was awful). That year, Bergeron had a 0.957 on-ice SV% in the playoffs while Thornton's was .895 - of course one was +15 and lifted the Cup while the other was -5. You're discounting Thornton's excellent playoff runs that came up short for reasons that have nothing to do with Thornton.

Yes the Kings won with Quick throwing up a .911. That's entirely because Niemi was godawful in the first round. If he puts up even a .900 SV% in that series we get the fourth win, beat the Kings and possibly lift the Stanley Cup. Sure the Hawks won with Niemi but that had way less to do with Toews outperforming Thornton than it did with that Hawks team having Keith-Seabrook as its top pairing while ours was Vlasic and an over the hill Blake, not to mention prime Sharp and Hossa on their second line vs. Pavelski and Setoguchi or prime Ladd and Bolland on their third line vs. Torrey Mitchell and Manny Malhotra.

Thornton gets way too much of the blame for the Sharks' playoff disappointments when no one non-goaltender player can really make that much of a difference in hockey. He's had his struggles in the playoffs, especially back in his Boston days when he played through cracked ribs, but a 0.84 points per game rate from your #1 center over a decade should be sufficient to win a Cup if the rest of the team is good enough. It hasn't been.

The sample size is plenty significant. Especially when you consider that our sample size consists of so many series in so many different years with so many different teammates and opponents. I could pull up 50 different things that changed between each of these series, but the one constant factor was almost always Joe Thornton scoring very little individually and the Sharks as a whole getting out-scored at 5V5 while Thornton was on the ice.

At the end of the day, Thornton’s 5V5 GF/60 of 1 in those 8 different matchups he lost in GF% is not something you can blame on anybody else when the sample size is so huge. You’ve said yourself that Thornton deserves most of the credit for Pavelski’s production, and that playing with Thornton is the only reason Pavelski produces at the same level of a Tarasenko. So you had better hold Thornton to the same standard when it comes to his own lack of scoring in the playoffs. This guy is carrying Pavelski to a top-10 Hart finish and making him a 2nd them all-star, but suddenly it’s not his fault, and “one player can’t do that much” in the playoffs?

Teams like Boston in 2011, LA in 2014, Pittsburgh in 2017, and Washington in 2018 all won championships with weaker depth than some of the teams on which Thornton has played, because their top players dominated the opposition. Same goes for the 2010 Hawks, 2014 Kings, and 2016 Penguins regarding goaltending.

In the 2016 Cup Finals, Thornton was on the ice for 1 goal for (an empty netter) and 5 goals against at 5V5. The Sharks as a whole scored 12 goals and the Penguins as a whole scored 15. Outside of the minutes where Joe Thornton was on the ice at 5V5, the Sharks out-scored the Penguins in the 2016 Cup Finals.

The guy has been dominated year after year at 5V5. It’s a big sample size. He has played what, like 1000 regular season games as a Shark with a 1.05 PPG and then like 100 playoff games as a Shark with a 0.85 PPG? And like a +200 in the regular season and like a -50 in the playoffs? What is a big enough sample size for you?

 

[SuperStarFerraro]

For f*** sakes that Panarin thread has been overtaken by Leafs fans, f***ing these guys are so f***ing. Annoying, I’m gonna lay out the next guy I see wearing a Leafs jersey I swear to god... so pathetic these stupid f***s. Think they can trade for anyone and everyone just because they got a UFA Tavares, f*** toronto maple leafs and f*** there fans, and f*** a John Tavares hope he has a decade of failure f***ing asshole... now that I got that out of the way, what would we give up for Panarin?

 

[Doctor Soraluce]

I think that we will go into the season with this:

Kane-Thornton-Pavelski
Hertl-Couture-LaBanc
Meier-Tierney-Donskoi
Sorensen-C-Karlsson

Exactly what I think. PDB has already show that he likes a beefy player on each of the top 3 lines so it's unlikely that Meier, Kane and Hertl would be together in any combination. If this is what happens I'm hoping Kane learns a lot playing with Pavs and Jumbo. If he's a sponge it could help advance his game. I think that 3rd line will steamroll a ton of matchups hold their own when out against most #1 lines.

 

[hohosaregood]

Hard turn on Thornton nowadays.

 

[Maladroit]

The sample size is plenty significant. Especially when you consider that our sample size consists of so many series in so many different years with so many different teammates and opponents. I could pull up 50 different things that changed between each of these series, but the one constant factor was almost always Joe Thornton scoring very little individually and the Sharks as a whole getting out-scored at 5V5 while Thornton was on the ice.

At the end of the day, Thornton’s 5V5 GF/60 of 1 in those 8 different matchups he lost in GF% is not something you can blame on anybody else when the sample size is so huge. You’ve said yourself that Thornton deserves most of the credit for Pavelski’s production, and that playing with Thornton is the only reason Pavelski produces at the same level of a Tarasenko. So you had better hold Thornton to the same standard when it comes to his own lack of scoring in the playoffs. This guy is carrying Pavelski to a top-10 Hart finish and making him a 2nd them all-star, but suddenly it’s not his fault, and “one player can’t do that much” in the playoffs?

Teams like Boston in 2011, LA in 2014, Pittsburgh in 2017, and Washington in 2018 all won championships with weaker depth than some of the teams on which Thornton has played, because their top players dominated the opposition. Same goes for the 2010 Hawks, 2014 Kings, and 2016 Penguins regarding goaltending.

In the 2016 Cup Finals, Thornton was on the ice for 1 goal for (an empty netter) and 5 goals against at 5V5. The Sharks as a whole scored 12 goals and the Penguins as a whole scored 15. Outside of the minutes where Joe Thornton was on the ice at 5V5, the Sharks out-scored the Penguins in the 2016 Cup Finals.

The guy has been dominated year after year at 5V5. It’s a big sample size. He has played what, like 1000 regular season games as a Shark with a 1.05 PPG and then like 100 playoff games as a Shark with a 0.85 PPG? And like a +200 in the regular season and like a -50 in the playoffs? What is a big enough sample size for you?

Whether a sample size is significant isn't merely dependent on the size of the sample itself but the discrepancy being observed. If Thornton had averaged half a point per game or something in his playoff career then sure I'd buy that he's a choker or something weird is going on or whatever. We're talking about a player who has averaged 1.01 points per game in the regular season with the Sharks averaging 0.84 points per game in the playoffs. Scoring goes down about 10% in the playoffs so if Thornton's offensive game was identical from the regular season to the playoffs we'd expect him to score 0.9 points per game in the postseason over the long haul. Instead, he's scored 0.06 points per game less than that - the difference of one point every 17 playoff games.

125 games is not nearly a large enough sample size to conclude that a 0.06 points per game drop is being driven by anything other than random variance. You're also assigning way too much responsibility for the Sharks' playoff failures to one player who's on the ice for about 1/3rd of the game scoring 6% less than we'd expect him to. Before Jones arrived the Sharks' playoff SV% in the Thornton era was a .906. No team is winning a Cup with that kind of playoff goaltending. Outside of 2011 and 2014 those teams also had bottom sixes staffed with useless players and the closest thing they had to a No. 1 defenseman was Dan Boyle who I love but is not nearly the same level, regular season or playoffs, as a Keith, Doughty, Lidstrom, Chara, Pronger or Niedermayer.

To me 2009 and 2014 were the Sharks' best chances to win the Cup (yes, better than 2016 - we were lucky to make the Final and were never beating that Penguins team) and I agree that Thornton could have been much better in both of those first round exits but it barely matters given how utterly kneecapped we were by the goaltending performance.

 

[Barrie22]

Hard turn on Thornton nowadays.

Yup thornton scores 5 in 6 . Marleau 3 in 6, pavs 1 in 6, cheechoo 2 in 6, clowe 2 in 6.

Thorntons fault.

Thornton 5 in 5. Marleau 0 in 5. Pavs 0 in 5. Couture 4 in 5.

Thorntons fault.

And those are 2 series in which thornton has been heavily criticized for on this board.