Sharks have changed on fly
Two teams share a rivalry, but San Jose has had the upper hand lately
Brent Burns, who has an interesting view of the world at the best of times, says it isn’t exactly a mystery.
The San Jose Sharks are a good team. The Canucks have been a good team. They play each other regularly and they’ve met in two playoff series over the last three years.
Throw all that in the blender and you’re bound to stir up a rivalry.
“I don’t know if the playoffs pushed it,” said the Sharks’ tattooed man. “It’s just natural when you play a good team a lot of times.
“We’re kindred spirits. (pause) Kindred spirits. I like that.”
Which is more than the Canucks can say.
If, as Burns avers, there’s a spiritual connection between the two teams, you’d have a hard time proving it by the way the Sharks have rag-dolled the Canucks the last two years. Thursday night, the Pacific Division’s new bully boys rolled into The Rog and rolled up the Canucks 4-1 in a game that looked close for a while but wasn’t really.
If you’re scoring at home, that marks the Fish’s 11th straight playoff, regular-season and pre-season win over the Whale, including, if memory serves, a four-game sweep in the opening round of the 2013 postseason that prompted seismic changes with the Canucks.
This, of course, suggests the Canucks are rivals to the Sharks the way a nail is a rival to a hammer. But, roll back the calendar a couple more years and in the 13 regular and playoff games before the Sharks started their run, the Canucks had gone 10-1-2, including a five-game ouster in the 2011 Western Conference final that prompted seismic changes within the Sharks.
So there’s a history there. Maybe it isn’t particularly long or storied but it’s there and, given that the two teams now live in the same division, it should only intensify. The next step would be if the Canucks could actually beat the Sharks, but if John Tortorella’s team was wondering where the bar is set in their new division, they need only refer to the video from Thursday night’s beat down.
“I don’t think we had many guys going to make a difference,” said Tortorella, before adding, “Give them some credit. They locked it down and defended pretty well. It’s not like we’re playing against no one out there. But, again, we need more people going to play against a balanced team like that.”
More people like 80 per cent of the team. The most telling stat from this night? Mike Santorelli led all Canucks’ players with just under 24 minutes of ice time.
“He’s been playing well,” Tortorella said. “He deserved the ice time. I’m not crazy about playing him 24 minutes, but sometimes they make the decisions for me. I didn’t have many people going.”
Which wasn’t a problem for the Sharks.
“I think it was close to being the full-package road game,” said Sharks goalie Antti Niemi. “That’s the way we want to play.”
The Sharks, it should be noted, are simply the latest team to be billed as the Canucks’ chief adversary. In the early aughts it was Colorado and Detroit, Minnesota enjoyed a run for a while as did Calgary before Chicago emerged as the team’s main antagonist through three eventful playoff series.
It’s been almost three years, however, since the Canucks battled the Blackhawks in the postseason and, in that time, the Sharks have stepped into the vacuum. True there hasn’t been any of the violence seen in the best of the Hawks-Canucks, but there were a couple of signs Thursday night that a mutual dislike has developed between the two sides, most notably when Alex Edler popped the lid off rookie sensation Tomas Hertl late in the second period with a high hit that will draw the attention of the league.
But whatever happens next between these two teams will have to happen quickly. Their four-game season series concludes Nov. 14 which is both a blessing — those four games are easily the highlight of the Canucks’ early schedule — and a curse — how can they not play over the final five months of the season? — for the Orcans.
“I think the rivalry’s really building and it’s healthy for hockey on the West Coast,” said Sharks head coach Todd McLellan. “The playoffs series in the past have been very passionate hockey. It’s fun to play against this team because they’re so skilled and so competitive.”
Well, it’s certainly fun for the Sharks since they started wearing the daddy pants in this rivalry.
The 2011 Western final, in fact, seemed to mark a tipping point for both teams. The Sharks, to that point, had been a ground and pound team built on size and strength, with the always interesting Joe Thornton at the epicentre.
Following their five-game defeat at the Canucks’ hands, however, the Sharks rebuilt on the fly, jettisoning big bodies Ryan Clowe, Douglas Murray, Kent Huskins, Dany Heatley and others and rebuilding a deeper, younger, quicker team around centres Logan Couture and Joe Pavelski and a wildly underrated blueline corps.
Hertl, meanwhile, may be the missing piece on this team that is now 4-0 and has outscored the opposition 21-5.
“After 2011 there were some changes,” said McLellan. “The more significant ones came at the deadline last year (when Clowe and Murray were moved out). We had a team that was build to play a certain way and that type of game wasn’t producing success anymore.”
That no longer seems to be a problem for the Sharks. As for the rest of the West, that’s another question.