Thornton was outplayed in both of those series. The first one by a heavy amount and the second one to lesser talents than him but at least the second one had a lot more blame to go around. That team was too slow and the coaches were too stubborn to change tactics against what Hitchcock and the Blues were doing to them.
Speculation: Summer 2018 Roster Discussion Part IV
- Thread starter rangerssharks414
- Start date
- Status
Thornton was outplayed in both of those series. The first one by a heavy amount and the second one to lesser talents than him but at least the second one had a lot more blame to go around. That team was too slow and the coaches were too stubborn to change tactics against what Hitchcock and the Blues were doing to them.
WTFetus
Marlov
According to NHL 19 stats, Pavelski is the fastest skater on the Sharks. 
They've made him a speedster since like 08.
They've made him a speedster since like 08.
Juxtaposer
Outro: Divina Comedia
TomasHertlsRooster
Don’t say eye test when you mean points
I haven’t seen anybody crticize his performance in 2012 against St. Louis...that’s one of the series where he definitely gets a pass from me. Not sure which one the first one is.
Also, Thornton is the best player of the bunch. He is expected to do the most; those are the expectations of a #1C and that is what a Stanley Cup #1C almost always ends up doing.
spintops
Registered User
- Sep 13, 2013
- 1,681
- 935
Is it fair to say, if Thornton's linemates don't score he is going to have a lopsided GF%? Jumbo is about the assists, if his teammates can't put it in the net his lines not scoring. I would say he depends on his guys actually showing up more then other 1Cs because he is so dependent on passing / assists
TomasHertlsRooster
Don’t say eye test when you mean points
And yet he has played with so many different guys...Marleau, Heatley, Pavelski, Cheechoo; 4 different 40 goal scorers just off the top of my head. So many different linemates, so many different situations, so many different opponents. And the one constant across all of them is that Thornton lost his matchups at 5V5 in the playoffs and didn’t make up for it with individual production on special teams.
On top of that, Marleau and Pavelski both increase their goals per game in the playoffs over the course of their careers with a very hefty sample size that includes over 100 playoff games and over 40 playoff games for both. I am not, for a second, buying the argument that his linemates are when some of his linemates have a history of being clutch in the playoffs and Thornton is the most important player on his line.
Guys like Crosby and Ovechkin explode in the playoffs and turn Jake Guentzel and Tom Wilson into prolific playoff scorers. If Thornton can’t do that with any one of Joe Pavelski, Dany Heatley, Patrick Marleau, and Jonathan Cheechoo, that’s on him.
Last edited:
Shark Finn
∀dministrator
I had a dream where DW signed Pavelski to a 7x7 deal just because "nothing was happening this summer and he wanted to give out big news". I can say I'm glad I woke up.
OrrNumber4
Registered User
- Jul 25, 2002
- 16,068
- 5,341
Other posters have already responded to your main arguments, but I wanted to point out that scoring does not drop by 10% between RS and playoffs. It is more like 3% IIRC. Plus, Thornton’s plus-minus in the playoffs is legendarily atrocious. Also, your averages will be off since there are a few seasons where Thornton didn’t play in the playoffs and had relatively poor RS production (like this season).
The other thing which must be brought up is Thornton’s performance in the final games of series. If you look at games 5-7 of a series, Thornton scores at a .5PPG rate and is like -18 from 2006 to 2016.
1) This is statistical revisionism. People look at a decent stat line from years ago and conclude a player has been good/bad, yet people who actually watched him play at the time have a completely different opinion. Thornton had some garbage points in that series and was thoroughly broken by Rob Niedermayer.
2) No one faults Thornton for his performance against St.Louis. I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that that is the series people criticize him for. A much better option would have been the multiple series against LA, or the one against Pittsburgh, or Chicago, or Edmonton, or Dallas...
Last edited:
OrrNumber4
Registered User
- Jul 25, 2002
- 16,068
- 5,341
This is a solid point...I hadn’t really considered the managerial dynamics.
I concur that the team is unlikely to tank whilst DW is GM...but the idea that the organizational never will? I’m not completely sold on that.
hohosaregood
Banned
- Sep 1, 2011
- 32,530
- 12,848
Acquiring thornton was a huge mistake on DW's part. He really should've tanked those years when the GOAT Canadian, Russian, and American players were available. Thornton single handedly made us a team too good for a tank to even be a question in the mind. So what does that do? Big time whiff on not getting Patrick Kane. The best American forward of all time. Singlehandedly screwed us over.
Last edited:
AgentCooper
Registered User
Maladroit
Registered User
Right, who the f*** were we supposed to tank for in the past 12 years who's remotely on Thornton's level? McDavid is the only one and we actually did miss the playoffs that year and have a shot at him.
The reality is if we never traded for Thornton there would be no playoff expectations to underperform because the team would have spent a decade in the toilet. The revisionist history in this thread is incredible.
Which revisionist history? There are a lot of statements in this thread that can simultaneously be true. It's true that he's the biggest reason playoff expectations are what they are. It's also true that some of the series being mentioned, he wasn't good in.
Maladroit
Registered User
I've never claimed he was amazing in every playoff series. No player is. But he has absolutely been good enough in the playoffs during his Sharks tenure that the team should have won at least one Cup if their goaltending hadn't imploded on an annual basis. If we're assigning blame for the Sharks playoff failures the names at the top of the list are Antti Niemi, Todd McLellan and Evgeni Nabokov and no one even comes close apart from maybe Doug Wilson for never figuring out how to acquire competent depth scoring. Thornton isn't even in the discussion.
Pavelski2112
Bold as Boognish
SpaceCoastShark
Look what the cat dragged in
Let's not forget that the Sharks have limped in to the playoffs with crazy injuries on more than one occasion.
The Blackhawks won the Cup with Niemi because their team was good enough to overcome poor goaltending and that's the kind of team that DW needed to build but never really did. Niemi's performance with Chicago included a series win with .898 and .882 save percentages. Nabokov and Niemi both have had statistically similar series in their careers and the team has shown sporadically that it can overcome it but didn't. The reality is that the top of the list for those failures to blame will always be Doug Wilson because he put those teams together and has had many years to figure it out and hasn't. But the teams were never good enough in front of the goaltending to be what it needed to be to win a Cup. Goaltending is going to go up and down just like the skaters will so you need to have a very good team up and down the lineup and there have always been too many holes in the Sharks lineup especially on defense.
Pavelski2112
Bold as Boognish
Maladroit
Registered User
That Blackhawks team was at worst the third best team of the salary cap era. The Sharks have never constructed a team that good in their history and Joe Thornton is not the reason why.
Regardless the only reason they won the series against Philly with Niemi posting a .898 is that Leighton put up a .894. I'm not sure which series you're referring to where he had a .882 - that doesn't appear to have ever happened. Of course you can win a series with rotten goaltending if your opponent's goalie plays even worse. That hasn't happened for the Sharks in the Thornton era but that's very obviously not an argument for absolving Niemi.
In 2009 they ran into the best six games of Jonas Hiller's life while Nabokov let absolutely everything in and in 2014 Quick sucked but Niemi and Stalock were far worse. Those are the only years they've had a good enough roster relative to the field that they should have won the Cup. Maybe 2011 but again Niemi utterly shit the bed while Luongo was great.
I'll also say that to the extent the Sharks had a knack for making opposing goalies look superhuman a lot of that boils down to the conservative and predictable dump and chase, cycle the puck, send it to the back point offense McLellan was running and a complete lack of any offensive skill on the third and fourth lines or really the blueline outside of Boyle.
It's just such a lazy narrative to blame Thornton for the Sharks' failure to win in this era. The Sharks may be the best regular season team of the past 12 years overall but you really can't point to a single season where they were the absolute best. 09 and 14 come close but you can still make credible arguments for Detroit and Calgary in 09 then obviously the Kings and Hawks in 14. There's also the issue that until basically 2015 the conferences were severely imbalanced and the Sharks would always have to run the gauntlet just to get out of the West meanwhile every team the Eastern Conference sent to the Stanley Cup Final from Carolina in 2006 through NYR in 2014 was an absolute joke.
Last edited:
I never said that Thornton was the reason why. The reason why someone like Leighton puts up a marginally worse save percentage is because the group of skaters in front is deep and talented enough to create offense against them. It's not necessarily that the other goalie plays worse as much as it is the skaters actually manufacturing offense. It actually has happened in the Thornton era where they've been able to advance despite poor save percentage numbers. In Nabokov's time, I'm pretty sure the team advanced whenever they scored more than two goals a game in a series. The offense drying up is a problem that is easier to fix than goaltending. Goaltending performances are going to go up and down regardless of who you have but if you have forward depth and blue line depth, you give yourself the best chance to overcome that. The Sharks problem has almost always come back to a lack of depth up front or on the blue line and that's absolutely DW's fault more than anyone else.
Pavelski2112
Bold as Boognish
2014? The year where Brad Stuart had to step in for Vlasic because we had no defensive depth? I don't think so.
- Status
