Thoughts on the San Jose Sharks loss to New York and the Logan Couture injury.
DeMelo/Tennyson Pairing
I’m aware that with Martin out there aren’t many options, and the default is to go to Dillon and Burns, but come on. Having DeMelo and Tennyson paired together is a disaster waiting to happen. That’s exactly what transpired. People can complain all they want about the +/- rating of Brent Burns and Brendan Dillon, but Tennyson and DeMelo were horrific. What else could DeBoer have done you ask? Perhaps throwing DeMelo with Burns and leaving the pairing of Dillon/Tennyson together. I’d wager that would have been at least a little less damaging. And Brendan Dillon has no business being the team leader in TOI.
Alex Stalock
Stalock was screwed from the get-go. No Couture, no Paul Martin, and against a very talented New York Islanders team that, for some strange reason, still doesn’t get the credit they deserve. Did he play great? No, he didn’t – but how confident is he going to be knowing the team in front of him is on back to backs and missing a top six forward and a top four defender? I’m going to bet that he knew he was in for a shelling before the puck hit the ice. I’m not saying Stalock needs better starts, because Martin Jones has been amazing and this was a back to back, but let’s not take him behind the arena and shoot him just yet. It was a terrible situation to be put in.
Goldobin
More #NHLFirsts! Nikolay Goldobin finishes off a perfect pass for career goal number one.
https://t.co/JL3mP0mbR1
— NHL (@NHL) October 18, 2015First career NHL goal, and there’s plenty more where that came from. What was the best part? It came on a beautiful pass from Joe Thornton. DeBoer is in the zone when it comes to Goldobin. Top six talent, playing in the top six. None of this garbage about playing him somewhere else. Put him with the Joe’s and watch the magic happen. You want to extract the most out of your players and getting the most out of Goldobin means giving him a chance to succeed, and succeed he did.
Penalty Kill
This is nonsense. Why is it nonsense? Well, let’s look at a pretty informative tweet by fellow HockeyBuzz writer Ryan Wilson from tonight:
I'm confused. A star player can penalty kill effectively? I've been told it was a special skill for shitty even strength players, huh.
— Ryan Wilson (@GunnerStaal) October 17, 2015You are allowed to do that. You don’t have to play bad players on the PK.
San Jose pumps out some of their worst players during the PK – and they did it last year as well – and it just doesn’t work out. Your better players are your better players. People don’t magically become better when they are shorthanded.
Of all the DeBoer things, this is the only real thing I have a problem with: Penalty Kill personnel.
Couture’s Injury
4-6 weeks is the official tag on the injury to Couture, and that sucks.
If you read this consistently you know I give Couture a hard time for his extra antics, but he’s a very important player for the San Jose Sharks and his injury is going to hurt the Sharks. That being said, this is still a very good hockey team and they should be able to find a way to overcome this.
Tackling adversity early in the season is much better than later in the season. San Jose needs to find a way to overcome the missing offense from Couture and get contributions from other players. Having Nikolay Goldobin producing is a start, but that second line still has to produce – much like they did tonight with the Ward goal.
Four to six weeks is the expected recovery time, then it’s a few extra games to get back into game-shape, so the Sharks shouldn’t expect to have a top-shelf Couture until just before Christmas. That’s a huge chunk of the season to be missing such an important player. Health is a key to success in the NHL. If you don’t have a healthy team you can forget about winning anything of importance. The main reason the Blackhawks have turned into a dynasty isn’t because they’re god’s gift to hockey, it’s because they’ve maintained a generally healthy core in addition to their talent.
Couture’s injury hurts, but they’re good enough to overcome it.
Thanks for reading