1994 San Jose Sharks The Greatest Turn around part 2...
38More random ramblings..
Well rather then talk of the sharks going from this greatest turn around ever, to the greatest self explosion suicide lets fuck over our team in less then half a year ever. As that could go on for awhile.
I think one of the problems withe sharks in 94 would be the couldnt seem to find consistent lines. Obviously the ov line was number one. But even the second line was often switched around. The only main stays was Elik and Dahlen. You would often see Errey and or Duchesne with them. Third line was a real cluster fuck. Only main stay was baker. He played with falloon, whitney, odgers, errey, duchesne.... basically just about anyone. And 4th line center well? I think in general the sharks did not play four lines at all. And craigwall, and butsayev would not play a single game period those playoffs. Gaudreau would also have trouble finding ice time, and was mostly stuck only to playing on the powerplay or penalty kill. Although he was injured. I guess finding a consistent third line in general was a big problem. I think though all the above those again is a testament to just how good the big 5 were though.(Again a baised larionov/makarov fans opinion though.)Or to correct that perhaps, just how good big 5, elik, duchesne, dahlen, errey, and baker were. Anyone that had consistent ice time on the sharks had to play great, because... they played a lot.
In a way its funny, even though falloon would score 20 goals a few times... A lot of nights it was hard to tell if he was ever on the ice. Whitney would stick through it though and turn out to become the good player people thought he would be. Unfortunately for pat falloon fans, the only time falloon would score 50 goals in a season was if you played nhl 93-95 or some other video game, where his stats were ridiculous. On that nerd note in quite a few games he is by far the best player on the sharks by a large margin. I guess that could be seen as the chicago, or Alexei Kovalev the use to happen in games. And on one other strange video game note jamie baker actaully is the best shark in some versions of wayne gretzky hockey.(I say some because there are quite a few diff versions of that game, for the same system, same year with diff ratings... Pretty strange...)
I think defense was a problem as well, in that the sharks defense were just not very physical, or perhaps physical enough. They also couldnt seem to get pederson and kroupa to both get going at the same time. I think watching the wing series and the toronto series is a pretty good contrast for this. Pederson looks really fast, and in on a ton of plays vs the wings.... Vs toronto its like.. almost teh exact opposite. Pederson is almost invisible... Maybe just something was said to them to switch? Or maybe pederson had some sorta of minor injury that series I dunno.