Speculation: Summer 2018 Roster Discussion Part IV

[Maladroit]

2014? The year where Brad Stuart had to step in for Vlasic because we had no defensive depth? I don't think so.

Injuries killed us that year for sure. But when that team was healthy this was our lineup:

Hertl-Thornton-Burns
Marleau-Couture-Havlat
Nieto-Pavelski-Wingels
Sheppard-Desjardins-Kennedy

Vlasic-Demers
Irwin-Boyle
Stuart-Braun

You had far and away the best line in hockey with Hertl-Thornton-Burns, another elite first line in Marleau-Couture-Havlat, a legitimate second line as your third line and a legit third line as your fourth. And while the defense doesn't look spectacular on paper Vlasic-Demers was as good a shutdown pair that year as Vlasic-Braun has ever been, Irwin-Boyle could dominate in soft minutes and Stuart was still just mobile enough that he and Braun could stay above water against middle six forwards. This was the team that finally had depth along with a blueline where five of the six defensemen weren't liabilities when it comes to skating or moving the puck.

When we started the season with that lineup we went 10-1-1 against a slate of really good teams with the only regulation loss coming on a literal last second goal in Boston. The possession numbers were out of this world good and we weren't just beating teams, we were destroying them 9-2, 6-3, 6-2, 4-1, 4-1, 4-1. Then after the 12th game Burns gets injured, Havlat obviously can't stay in the lineup, then Dustin Brown takes out Hertl which gives Pavelski a career year but kills the third line and as we all know it culminates with the Vlasic injury ending our season. But if they'd been healthy for the playoffs that team probably wins the Cup despite Niemi in net and despite having to face the peak Kings and peak Hawks.

 

[Pavelski2112]

Irwin was f***ing terrible. Braun had to carry Stuart around. Boyle was on his way out and Demers still couldn't play defense that well. Niemi had one of the worst playoff series I've ever seen.

The bottom six was nowhere near as good as it is even now. Nieto and Wingels had good years, but Sheppard was useless for 95% of the year. Kennedy was also invisible. Hell, I forgot he was a Shark. Torres made the fourth line click, but then of course the Department of Inconsistent Decisions decided to call him out on a rule that didn't exist yet.

 

[Maladroit]

Irwin was ****ing terrible. Braun had to carry Stuart around. Boyle was on his way out and Demers still couldn't play defense that well. Niemi had one of the worst playoff series I've ever seen.

The bottom six was nowhere near as good as it is even now. Nieto and Wingels had good years, but Sheppard was useless for 95% of the year. Kennedy was also invisible. Hell, I forgot he was a Shark. Torres made the fourth line click, but then of course the Department of Inconsistent Decisions decided to call him out on a rule that didn't exist yet.

Right, I even forgot about Torres. Throw him on there on the fourth line instead of Sheppard. If you go back and look at the stats of these players that year they're all still incredibly effective. Irwin-Boyle was a 55% possession pairing in sheltered minutes and Vlasic-Demers was an insane 58% possession pairing in the toughest minutes possible. This was a dominant team and that first 12 games, while obviously a very small sample size, is proof of what they could accomplish when healthy. They weren't just beating teams in that stretch to start the season before Burns got injured, they were outshooting them like 45-15 and scoring six or more goals. It's the best I've ever seen a Sharks team play for any stretch of time.

 

[Juxtaposer]

If your team falls to pieces when one player goes down with injury, it wasn’t that good a team. Vlasic going down turned the 2014 Sharks from an elite team to a terrible team, because Vlasic was the only NHL-caliber left-handed D on that team. Irwin was passable ONLY because Boyle was amazing. Stuart was dragged kicking and screaming by Braun to “not catastrophic” levels of play. And as soon as Vlasic went down, Demers absolutely fell apart; he was so f***ing awful in that series after Vlasic went down, it was almost certainly the biggest reason we lost aside from Niemi.

But let’s not forget that there wasn’t a single forward, including Thornton, who did jack shit past game 3 of that series. Niemi and Demers were the biggest culprits, but Thornton was right behind them.

The 2010 Blackhawks were undoubtedly the second or third best team of the cap era, but are we really going to use that to downplay Toews’ TWENTY-NINE POINTS IN TWENTY-TWO GAMES???

 

[Pinkfloyd]

I don’t care how good people think the Hawks were. That’s the type of team that DW should be trying to build. You want the deepest team possible and they had room and assets to do that and didn’t for whatever reason. When it comes to Thornton, he had some great rounds and some crappy ones but people whitewash some of his crap ones because of his point totals and lose context. He had five points in five games against the Blues in 2012 but he was terrible in that series.

 

[gaucholoco3]

If your team falls to pieces when one player goes down with injury, it wasn’t that good a team. Vlasic going down turned the 2014 Sharks from an elite team to a terrible team, because Vlasic was the only NHL-caliber left-handed D on that team. Irwin was passable ONLY because Boyle was amazing. Stuart was dragged kicking and screaming by Braun to “not catastrophic” levels of play. And as soon as Vlasic went down, Demers absolutely fell apart; he was so ****ing awful in that series after Vlasic went down, it was almost certainly the biggest reason we lost aside from Niemi.

But let’s not forget that there wasn’t a single forward, including Thornton, who did jack **** past game 3 of that series. Niemi and Demers were the biggest culprits, but Thornton was right behind them.

The 2010 Blackhawks were undoubtedly the second or third best team of the cap era, but are we really going to use that to downplay Toews’ TWENTY-NINE POINTS IN TWENTY-TWO GAMES???

So did the Blackhawks ever have to overcome losing Keith. How about the Kings with Doughty, or the Bruins with Chara. None of those teams would have survived losing their #1 D I don’t care how good they were. The only team to be able to lose their top D is the Penguins and they had possibly the #1 and #2 Centers in the League.

I know people don’t want to hear it but it is really hard to win the cup and the #1 reason the Sharks haven’t won is LUCK!

 

[Maladroit]

If your team falls to pieces when one player goes down with injury, it wasn’t that good a team. Vlasic going down turned the 2014 Sharks from an elite team to a terrible team, because Vlasic was the only NHL-caliber left-handed D on that team. Irwin was passable ONLY because Boyle was amazing. Stuart was dragged kicking and screaming by Braun to “not catastrophic” levels of play. And as soon as Vlasic went down, Demers absolutely fell apart; he was so ****ing awful in that series after Vlasic went down, it was almost certainly the biggest reason we lost aside from Niemi.

But let’s not forget that there wasn’t a single forward, including Thornton, who did jack **** past game 3 of that series. Niemi and Demers were the biggest culprits, but Thornton was right behind them.

The 2010 Blackhawks were undoubtedly the second or third best team of the cap era, but are we really going to use that to downplay Toews’ TWENTY-NINE POINTS IN TWENTY-TWO GAMES???

Have you looked at what other Cup-winning rosters would look like if their most irreplaceable player went down to injury? How would the Blackhawks have fared if a Toews injury made Michal Handzus their #1 center in 2013? Or Brad Richards playing that role in 2015? Or if Keith went down and Johnny Oduya was their best left side option? Or what if Zdeno Chara went down in 2011 and Andrew Ference was Boston's #1 left defenseman? Or if Doughty had gotten injured in 2012 or 2014 leaving Slava Voynov as the Kings' #1 defenseman overall? It's stupid to discount the 2014 team just because an injury to their most valuable player destroyed the team. The same fate would befall almost any championship roster.

 

[Jaleel619]

Sharks sign Erik Karlsson and Panarin, will they??

 

[Mafoofoo]

Sharks sign Erik Karlsson and Panarin, will they??

It's a done deal. We're just waiting to announce the signings right before training camp.

 

[OrrNumber4]

Have you looked at what other Cup-winning rosters would look like if their most irreplaceable player went down to injury? How would the Blackhawks have fared if a Toews injury made Michal Handzus their #1 center in 2013? Or Brad Richards playing that role in 2015? Or if Keith went down and Johnny Oduya was their best left side option? Or what if Zdeno Chara went down in 2011 and Andrew Ference was Boston's #1 left defenseman? Or if Doughty had gotten injured in 2012 or 2014 leaving Slava Voynov as the Kings' #1 defenseman overall? It's stupid to discount the 2014 team just because an injury to their most valuable player destroyed the team. The same fate would befall almost any championship roster.

It is interesting you look at Michael Handzus, who was absolute trash for San Jose but was somehow more than decent on Chicago. I always thought it was because Toews and Hossa could go out there and pound the other teams' best players into the ground. That creates so much space for players like Handzus to operate. You'd be surprised how much better your depth looks when your best players are clearing the way for them.

Let us not forget that Vlasic played in games 4 and 5, and the Sharks still could not manage one win in four games. James Sheppard had like 6 points in that series...twice as many as Joe Thornton.

 

[OrrNumber4]

When we started the season with that lineup we went 10-1-1 against a slate of really good teams with the only regulation loss coming on a literal last second goal in Boston. The possession numbers were out of this world good and we weren't just beating teams, we were destroying them 9-2, 6-3, 6-2, 4-1, 4-1, 4-1. Then after the 12th game Burns gets injured, Havlat obviously can't stay in the lineup, then Dustin Brown takes out Hertl which gives Pavelski a career year but kills the third line and as we all know it culminates with the Vlasic injury ending our season. But if they'd been healthy for the playoffs that team probably wins the Cup despite Niemi in net and despite having to face the peak Kings and peak Hawks.

Can I just point out the hypocrisy of saying we cannot judge Thornton on 360 minutes/24 games of playoff play, but you want to just give the Sharks a cup based on 11 regular season games?

The Sharks started off the season (and the first three games of the playoffs) playing a fast, aggressive, up-and-down North-South hockey. They attacked and drove the net while trying to score on the transition. But, they retreated from that both times, and we know the result.

That kind of aggressive hockey is 100% anathema to Joe Thornton's game. He is a pass-first, second, third, and fourth type player, and he only doubles down when things get tough. He plays an East-West game, slowing everything down and looking to burn opponents on their set plays. LA adapated to the Sharks, and they didn't adapt back...they tried to score with their surgical, precise, passing game instead of attacking or driving the net.

 

[Maladroit]

Can I just point out the hypocrisy of saying we cannot judge Thornton on 360 minutes/24 games of playoff play, but you want to just give the Sharks a cup based on 11 regular season games?

The Sharks started off the season (and the first three games of the playoffs) playing a fast, aggressive, up-and-down North-South hockey. They attacked and drove the net while trying to score on the transition. But, they retreated from that both times, and we know the result.

That kind of aggressive hockey is 100% anathema to Joe Thornton's game. He is a pass-first, second, third, and fourth type player, and he only doubles down when things get tough. He plays an East-West game, slowing everything down and looking to burn opponents on their set plays. LA adapated to the Sharks, and they didn't adapt back...they tried to score with their surgical, precise, passing game instead of attacking or driving the net.

Just for the record Thornton had 13 points in those 12 games...

Of course it's a small sample size and I'm obviously not saying the Sharks would have maintained that pace and finished the season with 144 standings points. But it's the only stretch of that season before key injuries started piling up and the depth was no longer unparalleled. That's the best I've ever seen any team look in the cap era and while the Sharks certainly wouldn't have been able to continue demolishing teams even if they had stayed healthy I'm confident they were the best team in the league.

 

[Nolan11]

If your team falls to pieces when one player goes down with injury, it wasn’t that good a team. Vlasic going down turned the 2014 Sharks from an elite team to a terrible team, because Vlasic was the only NHL-caliber left-handed D on that team. Irwin was passable ONLY because Boyle was amazing. Stuart was dragged kicking and screaming by Braun to “not catastrophic” levels of play. And as soon as Vlasic went down, Demers absolutely fell apart; he was so ****ing awful in that series after Vlasic went down, it was almost certainly the biggest reason we lost aside from Niemi.

But let’s not forget that there wasn’t a single forward, including Thornton, who did jack **** past game 3 of that series. Niemi and Demers were the biggest culprits, but Thornton was right behind them.

The 2010 Blackhawks were undoubtedly the second or third best team of the cap era, but are we really going to use that to downplay Toews’ TWENTY-NINE POINTS IN TWENTY-TWO GAMES???

Vlasic's injury and our lack of depth on the left was the key to that series loss. For this next year, Ryan and Dillon are better depth but I'm still worried about our lack of LHD coming up in our farm. Should we be looking for an 8d on the left? I haven't seen him play but 24 year old Duncan Siemens is a UFA. Remember liking him at his draft #11 overall. Does he have potential enough to invite to camp?

 

[OffSydes]

Y'all hating on Kane but he is practicing golf so when the Sharks are eliminated in the 1st he will be well prepared

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

It is interesting you look at Michael Handzus, who was absolute trash for San Jose but was somehow more than decent on Chicago. I always thought it was because Toews and Hossa could go out there and pound the other teams' best players into the ground. That creates so much space for players like Handzus to operate. You'd be surprised how much better your depth looks when your best players are clearing the way for them.

Let us not forget that Vlasic played in games 4 and 5, and the Sharks still could not manage one win in four games. James Sheppard had like 6 points in that series...twice as many as Joe Thornton.

Handzus played “well” for Chicago because he was stapled to the hip of Patrick Kane, who, in the playoffs, is a better offensive forward than anybody who has ever played for San Jose.

Have you looked at what other Cup-winning rosters would look like if their most irreplaceable player went down to injury? How would the Blackhawks have fared if a Toews injury made Michal Handzus their #1 center in 2013? Or Brad Richards playing that role in 2015? Or if Keith went down and Johnny Oduya was their best left side option? Or what if Zdeno Chara went down in 2011 and Andrew Ference was Boston's #1 left defenseman? Or if Doughty had gotten injured in 2012 or 2014 leaving Slava Voynov as the Kings' #1 defenseman overall? It's stupid to discount the 2014 team just because an injury to their most valuable player destroyed the team. The same fate would befall almost any championship roster.

I’m not blaming Thornton for that team’s loss. I’m okay with blaming the entire reverse sweep on Vlasic’s injury because Vlasic was a legit #1D on a team who relied on arguably the best top pairing in the NHL of Vlasic-Braun (where Vlasic was the best player on that pairing) where the rest of the team was very thin.

But, oh my goodness...3 points in 7 games, demolished in goals for...that is not good enough for a Stanley Cup #1C at all! Thornton just never scores in the big games against top teams...he never bulls his way through and makes things happen. Occasionally, he dominates possession against top teams, but does not score in the big games. (2013 against LA) Occasionally, he dominates and scores against the weak teams. (The first 3 rounds of 2016) but he NEVER dominates and scores against top teams. We have only once lost a series, in my viewing, where one could clearly say “man, Thornton was scoring at or above his regular season pace, including in big moments of big games, he was not getting totally crushed in GF%, and we still lost.” That series was 2012 against St. Louis.

If you want to say that Thornton has never had a team like 2013 Chicago and 2016 Pittsburgh, that won a championship despite p̵o̵o̵r̵ standard Joe Thornton playoff production from the #1C, go for it. One might argue that at least those guys didn’t get crushed in GF% the way that Thornton consistently does, but I won’t bother. Because Toews and Crosby have also had huge playoff performances that are significantly better than any playoff performance from Joe Thornton’s career! Those guys have also carried teams that are inferior to the 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2016 versions of the Sharks to a championship.

The only consistent over every single playoff run in the Thornton era is that the Sharks have lost and that Thornton has been crushed in 5V5 GF% and has not produced at his regular season superstar #1C level. He absolutely deserves the majority of the blame for the Sharks’ playoff failures when he has consistently been the most important player on the team and one of the best in the NHL and he has consistently lost his playoff matchups.

Nabokov never lost a series where the Sharks scored over 2 goals per game and you want to blame him for Thornton’s playoff failures? You want to blame the goaltender for Thornton losing GF% in most of his matchups, when the Sharks averaged 1 5V5 GF/60 with Thornton on the ice? You want to say that a sample size of 360 minutes is too small when Thornton is losing matchups to guys like Paul Stastny and Dave f***ing Bolland? No, no, no. I don’t give a f*** what the sample size is. If you go out there against Dave f***ing Bolland in a playoff series, lose in GF%, (and SF% in a series where the Sharks trailed for like the entire time) that is on you! And no, it’s not on Nabokov, when the Sharks 5V5 GF/60 was 1.36 during that matchup from 1 goal on which Thornton did not register a point. It’s not on luck because of a small sample size. It’s on Joe Thornton for not demolishing Dave f***ing Bolland to the point where Quenneville says “oh shit, this isn’t going to work. I need Toews on Thornton because Bolland cannot handle him” after no more than 5 minutes of that matchup.

Have you looked at what other Cup-winning rosters would look like if their most irreplaceable player went down to injury? How would the Blackhawks have fared if a Toews injury made Michal Handzus their #1 center in 2013? Or Brad Richards playing that role in 2015? Or if Keith went down and Johnny Oduya was their best left side option? Or what if Zdeno Chara went down in 2011 and Andrew Ference was Boston's #1 left defenseman? Or if Doughty had gotten injured in 2012 or 2014 leaving Slava Voynov as the Kings' #1 defenseman overall? It's stupid to discount the 2014 team just because an injury to their most valuable player destroyed the team. The same fate would befall almost any championship roster.

The 2014 Sharks roster may have been the best “team”, but they never ever would have won anything with Thornton scoring 3 points and adding a minus 6 per 7 games.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

So did the Blackhawks ever have to overcome losing Keith. How about the Kings with Doughty, or the Bruins with Chara. None of those teams would have survived losing their #1 D I don’t care how good they were. The only team to be able to lose their top D is the Penguins and they had possibly the #1 and #2 Centers in the League.

I know people don’t want to hear it but it is really hard to win the cup and the #1 reason the Sharks haven’t won is LUCK!

Nope. Not buying it for a second.

The same is often said about poker; that it is all about luck. Those who win are merely lucky, and those who lose are merely unlucky.

And yet, the winners always seem to be the same group of people. How does Phil Hellmuth constantly end up winning or coming close to winning the World Series of Poker? There are tens of thousands of people that enter this tournament for a game that is all about luck, and yet the same guy beats 99.9% or 100% of them over and over again?

On a similar note, winning in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is “all about luck”. Yet Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby, and Anze Kopitar have won 8 of the last 10 Stanley Cups as their team’s #1 center. In those 8 playoff runs, their combined stats and plus/minus:

Toews: 64 points in 68 games +15
Kopitar: 46 points in 46 games +25
Crosby: 77 points in 72 games +11

These guys, over the course of 8 Stanley Cups in 10 years, average over 1 point per game. Thornton, in his Stanley Cup Playoff career, has never scored above a point per game in any single playoff year. This is over the course of 186 games in 8 different Stanley Cup runs for these 3, and 160 games over 8 different non-Stanley Cup runs for Thornton. There is also the plus/minus, where these guys combined average 0.27 plus per game. Roughly a plus-one per 4 games. Thornton has only done that once in his career in 2012 when he was a +2 in 5 games.

If you add Begeron and Kuznetsov (who have only won a Stanley Cup once as #1Cs, so perhaps they were “lucky”), it pushes the numbers even further in the idea of “Thornton has never been a Stanley Cup #1C. Adding Bergeron and Kuznetsov, you get, over the past 10 seasons:

239 points in 233 games, +78

1.03 points per game, 0.33 + per game.

Thornton, over his playoff career, averages 0.77 points per game, and 0.16 minus per game. If you look at just his time with San Jose, he averages 0.84 points per game, and 0.13 minus per game. His best playoff run he had 1 point per game, and 0.4 plus per game. And just about everybody has said that in that specific 5 game sample size, he was good enough to be a Stanley Cup #1C. It is every single other playoff run of his Sharks career where he has been notably below par when comparing to Stanley Cup #1Cs.

One more thing to consider; this comparison is actually very favorable to Thornton because more than half of the playoff runs we are comparing him to are coming from Selke winning #1Cs who were deployed much differently than him. Thornton is coming up short in points and plus minus when he is being compared to guys like Bergeron, Kopitar, and Toews. Meanwhile, at no point in their careers have Bergeron, Kopitar and Toews ever spent more than half of the series getting 66.67% OZ Starts against a Dave f***ing Bolland. For Thornton’s production to be on par with a Stanley Cup Caliber #1C, he should probably be closer to the non-Selke #1Cs in Crosby and Kuznetsov who have 109 points in 96 games. That’s a 1.14 points per game which is 0.14 higher than any playoff run Thornton has ever had, 0.3 higher than his career playoff points per game as a Shark, and 0.37 higher than his career playoff points per game.

Bottom line, playoff Thornton is not a legit #1C. Period. That’s it. Anybody who can really look at all of these statistics and still blame Nabokov who never lost a playoff series where the Sharks averaged over 2 goals per game or Pavelski and Marleau whose GPG increases in the playoffs or Brad Stuart (and Wallin, Huskies, Polak) clearly has an agenda. And I don’t blame them. I love big Joe too and it’s hard to swallow all of this. But the truth is that the biggest difference between the San Jose Sharks and a Stanley Cup Championship has been the performance of their #1 center, Joe Thornton, which has always been below par for a Stanley Cup #1 center. He compares favorably to every single one of these guys besides Crosby in the regular season over the past 10 years but very unfavorably in the playoffs. That’s the initial point I was making. His playoff performance is on par with a Logan Couture level player (Couture’s playoff performances are actually slightly better than Thornton’s which is both disgusting and hilarious when considering the massive discrepancy between them in the regular season) and we all know we can’t win a Stanley Cup with Couture as our #1C.

 

[Maladroit]

Nabokov never lost a series where the Sharks scored over 2 goals per game and you want to blame him for Thornton’s playoff failures? You want to blame the goaltender for Thornton losing GF% in most of his matchups, when the Sharks averaged 1 5V5 GF/60 with Thornton on the ice? You want to say that a sample size of 360 minutes is too small when Thornton is losing matchups to guys like Paul Stastny and Dave ****ing Bolland? No, no, no. I don’t give a **** what the sample size is. If you go out there against Dave ****ing Bolland in a playoff series, lose in GF%, (and SF% in a series where the Sharks trailed for like the entire time) that is on you! And no, it’s not on Nabokov, when the Sharks 5V5 GF/60 was 1.36 during that matchup from 1 goal on which Thornton did not register a point. It’s not on luck because of a small sample size. It’s on Joe Thornton for not demolishing Dave ****ing Bolland to the point where Quenneville says “oh ****, this isn’t going to work. I need Toews on Thornton because Bolland cannot handle him” after no more than 5 minutes of that matchup.

This "Nabokov never lost a series where the Sharks scored more than 2 goals per game so that excuses his hilariously pathetic goaltending performances" narrative needs to die. When you outshoot a Ducks roster that had three NHL forwards and twelve guys who belonged in the middle six of an average AHL team 35-16 your goalie needs to come up with a shutout there. Even a reasonably competent goalie would have done so. When you outshoot that same Ducks team 44-26 in the next game your goalie can't give up three goals. That needs to be a 2-1 or 2-0 win. Same goes for the previous year against Dallas where Nabokov gave up three goals including a weak OT winner on 18 shots in a game we dominated after a series against Calgary that never should have gone seven games if it wasn't for Nabokov continually blowing easy saves.

Go rewatch the video from some of these playoff series, especially the one against Chicago. It's not just that Nabokov gave up too many goals, he was routinely giving up goals on shots that no one would categorize as a scoring chance. He was awful and Niemi was worse. Yes, the Sharks should have scored more but way more of that comes down to McLellan's stubbornness and incompetence when it came to running the offense than Thornton slightly underproducing his regular season numbers.

The 2014 Sharks roster may have been the best “team”, but they never ever would have won anything with Thornton scoring 3 points and adding a minus 6 per 7 games.

Of course not. Which is fine because the odds of Thornton continuing to average less than half a point per game are essentially nil. This is what people don't seem to understand about how much goaltending and other factors kneecapped us - the teams that win championships have stretches in the playoffs where their superstar isn't producing and either the goaltender or depth scoring comes through and steals those games which allows for a longer playoff run and more time for the superstar to inevitably start producing again. Thornton never got that chance in many postseasons because the goaltending was just that bad, no one else was putting the puck in the net, or both. NHL teams don't and can't win on superstar talent alone.

 

[Dicdonya]

f*** all this disrespect for Thornton.

DW is the only reason we have not won a cup. Not any single player on this team. Stop bitching about Thornton, and blame the person who has let him lead this team for over a decade if you think Thornton wasn't good enough.

 

[Maladroit]

Nope. Not buying it for a second.

The same is often said about poker; that it is all about luck. Those who win are merely lucky, and those who lose are merely unlucky.

And yet, the winners always seem to be the same group of people. How does Phil Hellmuth constantly end up winning or coming close to winning the World Series of Poker? There are tens of thousands of people that enter this tournament for a game that is all about luck, and yet the same guy beats 99.9% or 100% of them over and over again?

On a similar note, winning in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is “all about luck”. Yet Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby, and Anze Kopitar have won 8 of the last 10 Stanley Cups as their team’s #1 center. In those 8 playoff runs, their combined stats and plus/minus:

Toews: 64 points in 68 games +15
Kopitar: 46 points in 46 games +25
Crosby: 77 points in 72 games +11

These guys, over the course of 8 Stanley Cups in 10 years, average over 1 point per game. Thornton, in his Stanley Cup Playoff career, has never scored above a point per game in any single playoff year. This is over the course of 187 games in 8 different Stanley Cup runs for these 3, and 160 games over 8 different non-Stanley Cup runs for Thornton. There is also the plus/minus, where these guys combined average 0.27 plus per game. Roughly a plus-one per 4 games. Thornton has only done that once in his career in 2012 when he was a +2 in 5 games.

Kopitar has won one playoff game in the last four years. Toews has won three playoff games in the last three. Crosby never won a game beyond the second round for a six-year span in his prime playing in a joke of a conference that sent teams like the 2012 Devils and 2014 Rangers to the SCF. Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the quality of the rest of the team matters a whole hell of a lot more than any of those players' individual playoff performances in determining whether they win the Cup?

Also I know you're smart enough to not seriously be using plus-minus in a miniscule sample size to prove anything.

 

[hohosaregood]

**** all this disrespect for Thornton.

DW is the only reason we have not won a cup. Not any single player on this team. Stop *****ing about Thornton, and blame the person who has let him lead this team for over a decade if you think Thornton wasn't good enough.

Should've been angry since the moment Thornton was acquired if this is how it's gonna be. It's clear that Joe Thornton was a mistake.

 

[Fistfullofbeer]

It is really good to see that the good old 'Thornton is a choker' debate is back. Even within members of our own board.

You guys must be f***ing bored.

 

[JoeThorntonsRooster]

Kopitar has won one playoff game in the last four years. Toews has won three playoff games in the last three. Crosby never won a game beyond the second round for a six-year span in his prime playing in a joke of a conference that sent teams like the 2012 Devils and 2014 Rangers to the SCF. Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the quality of the rest of the team matters a whole hell of a lot more than any of those players' individual playoff performances in determining whether they win the Cup?

Also I know you're smart enough to not seriously be using plus-minus in a miniscule sample size to prove anything.

Both of Kopitar/Toews have not been #1Cs in the playoffs since their last Cup. No argument there. Also not exactly relevant. Crosby, Toews’ and Kopitar’s playoff performances were also the biggest reasons for their playoff failures in those years. Crosby didn’t win a game beyond the 2nd round over that time frame because he didn’t score a point beyond the 2nd round in that time frame. He got demolished by Bergeron in the 3rd round of the 2013 playoffs and yet he still finished with a higher points per game in that playoff year than Thornton has ever had in his career’s best playoff run. It still was not good enough and he deserves the majority of the blame there but at least he was getting schooled by Bergeron and not Dave f***ing Bolland.

This plus-minus isn’t in a minuscule sample size at all. This is looking at hundreds of games for each of them and there is a consistent trend throughout all of them. You’ve used plus-minus in the past to criticize Burns’ performance over the past 4 seasons and I fully understood and agreed because just like Thornton, Burns is the primary reason why his +/- has been so bad in those seasons. It’s far from a perfect stat but it’s quite telling when, year after year in the playoffs Thornton gets crushed in it and Bergeron, Kopitar, and Toews win in it.

 

[Dicdonya]

Should've been angry since the moment Thornton was acquired if this is how it's gonna be. It's clear that Joe Thornton was a mistake.

Not sure what you mean here? Are you saying I should have been angry? Or those upset at Thornton now should have been from the beginning?

If you are implying I should be angry, I disagree. Getting Thornton, never has, and never will be, a mistake to me. It has been nothing but an absolute treat to get to watch Thornton play hockey for over a decade, and being in a position to be hoping for a cup every single year he has been here.

 

[Maladroit]

Both of Kopitar/Toews have not been #1Cs in the playoffs since their last Cup. No argument there. Also not exactly relevant. Crosby, Toews’ and Kopitar’s playoff performances were also the biggest reasons for their playoff failures in those years. Crosby didn’t win a game beyond the 2nd round over that time frame because he didn’t score a point beyond the 2nd round in that time frame. He got demolished by Bergeron in the 3rd round of the 2013 playoffs and yet he still finished with a higher points per game in that playoff year than Thornton has ever had in his career’s best playoff run. It still was not good enough and he deserves the majority of the blame there but at least he was getting schooled by Bergeron and not Dave ****ing Bolland.

This plus-minus isn’t in a minuscule sample size at all. This is looking at hundreds of games for each of them and there is a consistent trend throughout all of them. You’ve used plus-minus in the past to criticize Burns’ performance over the past 4 seasons and I fully understood and agreed because just like Thornton, Burns is the primary reason why his +/- has been so bad in those seasons. It’s far from a perfect stat but it’s quite telling when, year after year in the playoffs Thornton gets crushed in it and Bergeron, Kopitar, and Toews win in it.

Jesus Christ, this isn't the NBA. Crosby is absolutely not the reason the Penguins had no playoff success between their 09 and 16 Cups. Marc-Andre Fleury was one of the worst playoff goalies in NHL history during that timeframe. Brandon Sutter is one of the worst players in the league and he was the best player in their bottom six for years. It's really not a coincidence that the Pens were this dominant perennial contender when they had Jordan Staal to back up Crosby and Malkin, then never threatened again after the Staal trade until they finally added Kessel, Hagelin and Bonino to beef up their depth along with Murray knocking Fleury out of the starter job. Crosby and Malkin's playoff production did not change at all between the Penguins Cup teams and the teams that got bounced in the first or second round on an annual basis. You're trying to pin teams' playoff success and failure to one non-goaltender player and it's completely absurd.

Also how do you not understand that looking at four full regular seasons of 5v5 team-relative goals percentage data for Burns is much different than 120 games of context free plus-minus.

 

[TheWayToRefJose]

Anyone else impressed with the depth we've been building with these undrafted or unsigned free agents?
Donskoi
Melkman
Radil
Soumela
Praplan
Simek
Halbgewachs
True
Kotkov

Although none are/will be superstars, it's much better than giving up assets to aquire worse players like ty mcginn, James Sheppard, etc.

We have a very deep pool of depth players now.