DeBoer says team ‘ran out of some gas’
Unlike recent postseason failures, there really wasn’t a sense of great despair or utter frustration in the Sharks’ locker room at SAP Center on Saturday night.
Maybe, just maybe, this San Jose team had come to terms with two things: It had put up as good a fight as it could against a talented, on-the-rise Edmonton Oilers team; and from the middle of March to the very end, the handwriting was on the wall.
The defending Western Conference champs, beat up and goal-starved, were done in six games of the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
“Everyone talked about getting to the Final the year before, and how tough the next year is,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “You always think you can be the team to buck that. It’s hard, it’s a grind. I’m not prepared to take inventory of what went wrong. But my gut feeling is we ran out of some gas the last month. It’s just a reality.”
It’s an honest assessment, not an excuse.
In spite of logging the second most travel miles in the league (48,872) and having an already short offseason cut shorter with the participation of seven of the team’s key performers at the late-summer World Cup of Hockey, the Sharks found themselves with a nine-point lead in the Pacific Division as late as March 15.
At that point, it seemed likely the Sharks would start a firstround playoff series at home instead of on the road against a higher-seeded team. In fact, San Jose was then in the hunt for the West’s No. 1 seed.
But that all changed when the Sharks lost six straight games in regulation from March 16-25, scoring seven goals in the process. A 5-4 overtime win over the Rangers on March 28 only interrupted the slide, which continued with two more losses immediately afterward.
The Sharks did right their course a bit with a 3-1 finish to the regular season. But two well-documented injuries to San Jose centers — Logan Couture took a puck to the mouth March 25, and Joe Thornton hurt his left knee April 2 — impacted the start of their playoff series against the Oilers.
“We had some guys who had some heroic courage playing in this series,” DeBoer said following Saturday’s 3-1 loss to Edmonton in Game 6. “I won’t get into the details or the injuries. There are some men in there that I’m amazed found a way to get out on the ice and do what they were able to do.
“Especially Joe Thornton,” he added. “When it gets released what he was dealing with, it was really exceptional to see what he did and how he played for us.”
No one with the team was using those injuries as an excuse, but it was clear some of the Sharks’ best players weren’t at 100 percent. It’s reasonable, too, to wonder whether defenseman Brent Burns was dealing with something. He managed only two goals in his final 29 games after scoring 27 in his first 59.
“You have Jumbo playing pretty much on one leg out there, and still he’s better than most of the guys in this league,” Sharks forward Patrick Marleau said. “The way the timing was this year, we had some injuries, but we still put up a pretty good fight. We didn’t feel like we were out of the series at any time. And a couple bounces here or there and it might have been different.”
The focus turns to the future as soon as Monday when the team assembles one last time to clean out lockers. A few players are sure to extend their season with invitations to the World Championships (May 5-17), while some like Couture, who needs extensive dental work, will remain in San Jose. Others, most notably Thornton and Marleau, have decisions to make regarding where they want to play next season.
“It’s a big summer,” Couture said. “You have some guys (whose contracts) are up. You have the expansion draft. And every year I’ve been here, the team has never been the same. There’s always changes. Unfortunately, that’s the way the league works. We’ll see what happens this summer. And come back hungry next year.”
“We had some guys who had some heroic courage playing in this series. I won’t get into the details or the injuries. There are some men in there that I’m amazed found a way to get out on the ice and do what they were able to do.” Peter DeBoer, Sharks coach