San Jose Sharks’ Playoff Struggles

San Jose Sharks’ Playoff Struggles

The San Jose Sharks missed the playoffs in 2014-15 for the first time in over a decade. This was a shocking turn of events for a team as stacked with talent as the Sharks, but it was only the most severe symptom of years of arguable underachievement. Through ten consecutive seasons of playoff contention, the Sharks led their division five times, and the league once, at the end of the regular season, and advanced to three Conference Finals. That they accomplished all this without ever winning a Stanley Cup, or even a Conference title, remains one of the more baffling situations in the post-lockout NHL, and it lies at the heart of the Sharks’ playoff struggles.

What Went Wrong in 2014-15

The reasons behind San Jose’s playoff struggles in 2014-15 are not especially mysterious. Frustrated by the team’s continual postseason underperformance, the Sharks made significant roster changes ahead of the season, the most prominent being the trade of defenseman Dan Boyle, whose void in the lineup Brent Burns could not quite fill during the 2014-15 campaign. Management even considered trading team leaders Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau. Though the Sharks wisely refrained from pulling that trigger, even the rumors of a trade spoke to a growing sense of panic. It was this fear, more than any shuffling of personnel, that led to the team’s discombobulation. Through the 2014-15 season, the Sharks won more games on the road than at home, something that had not happened to the franchise since 2007-08, a stretch documented in the team’s historical statistics. The pressure to perform in front of the home crowd, present for every team to some degree, was only heightened by San Jose’s long history of falling short in big games.

A History of Playoff Heartbreak

The 2014 Collapse

The panic and trade rumors were precipitated by San Jose’s especially painful 2014 postseason exit. The Sharks entered the playoffs as the second seed in the Western Conference and were favored over the Los Angeles Kings. Up 3-0 in the series heading into Game 4, San Jose appeared to have a stranglehold on the matchup, until the Kings won four straight games, making the Sharks only the fourth team in NHL history to lose a series after leading 3-0. The Kings would go on to beat every other opponent on their way to the Stanley Cup, but that was little comfort after such a devastating turnaround.

Back-to-Back Conference Finals Losses (2010-11)

The Sharks came closest to a championship in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, when they made consecutive Conference Finals. Like their 2014 loss to the Kings, San Jose’s 2010 Conference Finals loss to the Chicago Blackhawks seemed to reflect bad luck as much as anything else, as the Sharks were good, but the Blackhawks were exceptional that year. In 2011, however, the elimination felt more inexplicable. San Jose started strong, eliminating the Kings before facing the Detroit Red Wings in the Conference Semifinals. As would happen again in 2014, the Sharks’ momentum flagged after going up 3-0 in the series; though they ultimately defeated the Red Wings, it took the full seven games, and the team never regained its stride. The Vancouver Canucks eliminated San Jose in the Conference Finals in five games.

Leadership and the Captaincy Question

Twice during their ten-year postseason streak, the Sharks stripped their captain of the “C,” a rare move for any team, let alone one that consistently finished with such a high seed in the standings. Both Marleau and Thornton wore the captaincy before being stripped of the title, despite remaining integral players on the roster. Whether or not San Jose’s struggles can be blamed on the leadership, or lack thereof, that these two players provided, neither was able to motivate his teammates to elevate their games when the pressure was on. In every season during the playoff streak when the Sharks failed to escape the first round, Marleau, Thornton, or both had significantly diminished postseason production. In 2012, for instance, Marleau did not register a single point, and in 2014, eight of the ten points Thornton and Marleau scored between them came in the series’ first three games. When those two do not score, the Sharks do not win.

Confidence, Culture, and the Path Forward

In sports, as in many areas of life, confidence and success go hand in hand. Teams that are winning seem to get all the lucky bounces; teams that are losing seem to get all the rotten luck. After ten seasons of early playoff exits, the Sharks need to rebuild their belief that they can win. Their poor playoff performance has been a problem of locker-room culture and leadership, not of roster talent, as the Sharks’ playoff struggles during the 2014-15 season demonstrated all too clearly.