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.
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.
I think it’s hilarious that you hold Nabokov and Niemi - two solid starting goaltenders who were never elite - to a much higher standard than Joe Thornton, who is a Hall of Fame Superstar center.
Nabokov
needs to come up with a shutout on 16 shots against. Nabokov
can’t allow less 3 goals on 26 shots; that
needs to be a 2-1 or 2-0 win. By your own words, Nabokov
needs to allow 1 or 0 goals on 42 shots over the course of 2 games. Yet, Thornton, who is actually a Hall of Famer and somebody who is a bit more deserving of such ridiculous expectations, is totally absolved of all blame in the playoffs? Wild.
First it was on Nabokov/Niemi that Thornton had been consistently crushed in playoff matchups (ignoring that the worst series for matchups was probably against Bonino/Crosby/Cullen where Martin Jones was in net and put up an elite performance), and now it’s on Todd McLellan for Thornton having a GF/60 of 1 in these matchups we are talking about. Good to know.
Thornton did not slightly under-produce his regular season numbers. Let’s kill this right now. From 2005-2006 through 2016-2017, excluding the 2014-2015 season where there were no playoffs and 2016-2017 where Joe Thornton was crippled in the playoffs:
103 points in 121 playoff games (0.85 PPG)
820 points in 757 regular season games (1.08 PPG)
That’s a 0.23 drop in points per game.
I just think it’s crazy how you guys will blame Thornton for literally nothing!!! This guy draws even with 38 OZ, 9 NZ and 5 DZ starts against Matt Cullen, gets crushed with 66.67% OZ starts against Dave Bolland, and the blame is now on Doug Wilson for not acquiring decent bottom-6ers comparable to Bolland, Cullen, and Bonino? Dan Boyle/Brent Burns, Logan Couture, and Joe Pavelski score as many playoff points as Thornton since 2009-2010, and the blame is now on those players for not scoring significantly more than Joe Thornton?
If Couture, Boyle/Burns, and Pavelski are not good enough to be the 2nd best player on a Stanley Cup winner, and they are scoring as much as Thornton in the playoffs, then what gives? Maladroit, you’ve said that Pavelski is a product of Thornton. In that case, why on earth does Thornton not receive blame for scoring less playoff than Pavelski between 2009-2010 and 2016-2017? Why can we blame every single player except Thornton?
The reality is, there are some non-#1C differences between the Sharks and most Stanley Cup winners. Our #3Cs might not be as effective as Nick Bonino or Dave Bolland, and our #4Cs might not be as effective as Matt Cullen. Our 2nd best offensive player may not be as good as Patrick Kane. Our goaltender may not be as good as Tim Thomas or Jonathan Quick. But the biggest difference, and the one that has consistently been the case year after year, has been that Joe Thornton has not been as effective as the Stanley Cup winning team’s #1C.
We’ve had our #2C score 30 points in 24 games, 17 points in 15 games. We’ve had our #1RW score 14 goals. We’ve had our goaltender put up a Conn Smythe performance in a losing effort and we’ve had our goaltender put up a .930 SV% more than once. We’ve had our #1LW score a goal per game in back to back losing efforts in the conference finals. We’ve had that same #1LW score 9 goals and 5 assists in 11 games. We’ve had a defenseman score 24 points in 24 games - the most playoff points by a defenseman since Brian Leetch. And another defenseman score 30 points in 33 games over the course of 2 playoff runs. A lot of those things happened in the same years. The one thing we have never had is a dominant #1C that just took games over and was the best player for 4 rounds.
