San Jose getting youthful boost
Top prospects Meier, Labanc appear to be turning the corner
TORONTO >> Coach Pete DeBoer tends to be frugal in his praise of the Sharks’ younger players. He knows that the line separating success and complacency can be fine in the NHL and he doesn’t want to dull his youngsters’ edges by allowing them to get comfortable.
Nevertheless, he isn’t hesitating to acknowledge that he believes a pair of the Sharks’ top prospects — Timo Meier and Kevin Labanc — are turning the corner.
“I think so. Yes I do,” the Sharks coach said. “At the same time, we can’t rest on that. We’ve got to be very cognizant of that. They’re playing with more confidence. They’re contributing, helping us and the older guys on the team no longer feel like they’re carrying them around.
“They’re starting to stand on their own.”
Back in training camp, both DeBoer and general manager Doug Wilson laid out the blueprint for success in the Sharks’ post-Patrick Marleau era. Heading into their second meeting with Marleau and the Toronto Maple Leafs (23-16-2) in Canada on Thursday, the Sharks (21-12-4) are starting to check off a lot of those boxes.
The Sharks are getting breakthrough seasons from supporting cast players, such as Joonas Dons--
koi, Tomas Hertl and Chris Tierney. The team is ranked among the league’s top five in every key defensive stat category. The power play is back (ranked fifth at 22.0 percent), and Joe Thornton is leading the team in scoring with 27 points after undergoing major offseason knee surgery.
The kids are starting to prove that they’re all right, as well.
After ranking 19th in scoring last season (2.67 goals per game), and losing Marleau’s 27 goals in free agency, the Sharks knew that they would need a few of their budding prospects to step up and help replace the veteran forward’s offensive production.
But the Sharks’ need for youthful contributions cuts deeper than that.
Last year, the Sharks were among the oldest teams in the NHL at a time when the league is getting younger, faster and more skilled. If the Sharks are going to stay relevant, they need to take
some weight off the shoulders of veterans, such as Thornton (age 38) and Joe Pavelski (33), and pass it on to a new generation.
“Everyone’s getting older, myself included, I’ll be 29 soon,” Logan Couture said. “We need some of our young guys to step up if this organization wants to go in the right direction.”
“You need cheap talent and the only cheap talent is young talent,” DeBoer said.
The success of the AHL Barracuda last season gave the Sharks reason to believe that they might have “cheap talent” in the organization to support core players, such as Thornton, Couture and Brent Burns.
The Barracuda finished the 2016-17 season with the top record in the AHL’s Western Conference (4316-9) thanks to an influx of young talent that included Meier, Labanc, Marcus Sorensen, Barclay Goodrow, Joakim Ryan, Tim Heed, Danny O’Regan and Ryan Carpenter.
But as DeBoer once said, the road is littered with players who’ve found success in the minors; making it in the NHL is an entirely different challenge.
Labanc and Meier learned this lesson through first-hand experience. Meier recorded just six points in 34 games last season, moving up and down between the Barracuda and the Sharks. Labanc finished his NHL season with just one goal in his last 31 games.
Things didn’t come any easier for Meier and Labanc over the first two months of the 2017-18 season.
Meier scored just one goal in his first 16 games, serving as a healthy scratch at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 23. Labanc recorded just two assists in a 15-game span from Oct. 23 to Dec. 7. He spent two games in the minors during that stretch and got scratched from three games.
With that in mind, it isn’t entirely surprising that the Sharks ranked 28th in goals per game (2.61) as recently as Nov. 28.
But after fighting through some growing pains, things started to click for both Meier and Labanc in December.
With five tallies in eight games, Meier is now tied for third on the team in goals (eight), earning ice time on the Sharks’ top line. Labanc has recorded 12 points in his past 10 games, flashing the skill that allowed him win the Ontario Hockey League’s scoring title two years ago.
Over that span, the Sharks are 6-2-2, averaging 3.10 goals per game.
“It’s just experience,” Labanc said. “You get more and more comfortable the more games you play. I’m getting into a routine and realizing that you can never be too high and never be too low in this business. You’ve just got to keep working.”
But stringing together a few weeks of quality hockey is one thing; can Meier and Labanc continue to produce at the level that the Sharks will need from them to make another deep run in the playoffs?
“I think it’s sustainable,” DeBoer said. “They’re learning what it takes to be everyday productive NHL players. There’s been some bumps for both guys along the way, but I think they’re both coming out the other end. I don’t know if we’ve seen the end of the bumps, but we’ve definitely seen huge improvements.
“They’re really starting to help us.”