Audition continues for third spot up top
Revolving door has seen eight different skaters on coach DeBoer’s left wing
The revolving door on the Sharks’ top line continues to spin, further exposing the gaping hole in the team’s top-six forward group.
The Sharks gave Joonas Donskoi, Kevin Labanc, Timo Meier and Melker Karlsson looks on Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski’s left wing Thursday, continuing a search that started last season when head coach Pete DeBoer auditioned eight different skaters as the third piece to his top line.
“I haven’t found one yet. We’ve got to keep (looking),” DeBoer said. “Our forwards in general, we’re going to keep mixing and matching. We’ve split up Jumbo (Thornton) and Pav (Pavelski) for a couple periods, we’ve moved some other guys around. We’ll keep shuffling the deck until we get some production.”
At this point, it seems like magic thinking to assume that a plug for the top-line hole will suddenly materialize from the group of forwards in the dressing room.
The Sharks could attempt to solve the problem internally in
a couple of ways, but both options are likely to create new complications.
DeBoer could reunite Tomas Hertl with Thornton and Pavelski, the most effective top line combination the Sharks have skated over the last four years. Hertl scored 15 goals in 35 games while skating with Thornton and Pavelski as a rookie in 2014-15, and the Sharks produced a 26-14-4 record with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final after he put them back together in 2015-16.
The problem here is that moving Hertl up to Thornton’s wing would have a ripple effect on Logan Couture’s line, which is the Sharks’ most consistent group right now. Couture has scored at a pointper-game pace (15 points in 15 games) since DeBoer moved Hertl up to his left wing in the third game of the season, plugging the hole opened by Patrick Marleau’s departure to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the offseason.
“Logan Couture’s been our best player. Him and Tomas have played well together and I think Tomas has been a big part of his success,” DeBoer said, explaining why he’s hesitant to reunite Hertl with Thornton and Pavelski.
“You rob Peter to pay Paul, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The Sharks could also split up Thornton and Pavelski, spreading the duo’s speed deficiencies over two lines. But this option failed to generate a spark when DeBoer turned to it for two periods against the Los Angeles Kings last Sunday, suggesting the answers to the Sharks’ scoring woes aren’t going to be found through simple coaching maneuvers.
The missing piece to the puzzle isn’t in San Jose right now, which is alarming because it’s increasingly challenging to acquire elite-caliber players on the trade market in the salary cap era.
The Ottawa Senators gave up six pieces in a three-way trade with the Nashville Predators and the Colorado Avalanche last week to acquire Matt Duchene, a reason Pavelski insisted that the answer must, “come from within.”
“It’s got to,” the Sharks’ captain said. “It’s too hard to go find somebody, especially with the way the NHL is. Maybe something comes, maybe it doesn’t, but by no means are we looking, as players, that we need something else. We have guys that are more than capable. We’ve proven it in the past.”
Two of the big-name players that could be on the market this winter — the Buffalo Sabres’ Evander Kane and the Dallas Stars’ Jason Spezza — are less than ideal fits.
Kane possesses a lot of the attributes the Sharks are looking for in a topline winger. He’s fast, he’s strong on the puck and he ranks fifth in goals since Dec. 1, 2016. But he also carries a lot of baggage. He was run out of Winnipeg by his teammates three years ago after showing up late to a team meeting and the Sharks place a high emphasis on character.
The incident also occurred under the watch of Jets coach Paul Maurice, who gave DeBoer his first coaching job, so it’s likely DeBoer might be hesitant to go down that road.
Kane would probably cost the Sharks a defenseman, such as Tim Heed or Joakim Ryan, a young forward and a draft pick, a high price to pay for a player who might not fit in with the culture of the dressing room.
Jason Spezza is another name churning in the rumor mill. Spezza scored 33 goals in 201516 and notched 50 points last year. He would bring much-needed skill and scoring to the Sharks’ topsix forward group, but he’s 34 and comes with a $7.5 million price tag next season.
After cutting ties with Marleau, the last thing the Sharks need is to overpay for another forward in his mid-30s when they suddenly have the luxury of cap space in their budget.
Without any obvious solutions, the Sharks might be stuck trying to fix the problem internally, which means more deck shuffling for DeBoer.
“It’s not a perfect world. I’d love to have a (Steven) Stamkos, (Nikita) Kucherov line here,” the Sharks coach said.