Wins and losses all that matter to McLellan at this point, NHL fines Bolduc for slew-footing Clowe — and looking ahead to Avs

For most of the season, Todd McLellan likes to say that HOW his team played can be even more important than the results of a game. 

But not now. 

“You’ve heard us in the past talk about how we play the game and we’re evaluating on that, but right now it’s flat out about wins and losses,” McLellan said after today’s practice. “ I didn’t think we were particularly sharp last night against Phoenix.  But we won the game and that’s very very important. 

“We can deal with the lack of crispness today at practice, but it’s easier to deal with it after you won,” he said when asked if the approach going forward after two wins differs than after those two losses to Anaheim and Los Angeles. “ We did just that.  We had a good meeting, did some video work, went on the ice and had a quick skate.” 

And he bought into the notion floated here earlier, that the Sharks are already in the playoffs in the sense that four losses sends everybody home. 

Now, “it’s a seven-game series and we have to win more than we lose,” McLellan said. “ And the teams we’re playing with are the teams we’re competing with so if we beat them, we’ll be OK.” 

******Six Sharks — Joe Pavelksi, Marty Havlat, Dominic Moore, Dan Boyle, Ryane Clowe and Brent Burns — stayed off the ice today, but McLellan said it would take some unforeseen development to keep any of them out of Monday night’s game against Colorado. 

Clowe had a rough, but ultimately successful night in that 4-3 shootout victory over the Coyotes on Saturday night.  And I think lost in all the fuss over that puck-to-the-helmet shot he took was his awkward fall into the boards a few minutes earlier. 

Coyote defenseman Alexandre Bolduc did get hit with a two-minute hooking penalty, but it looked as if it were far more dangerous than a routine minor and today the NHL agreed.  Bolduc was fined $2,500 for slew-footing Clowe, the maximum allowed under the CBA.  Glad to see someone was paying attention. 

*****That shootout win combined with other results around the NHL had increased the Sharks chances of making the post-season to 58.9 percent, according to the math-hockey whizzes at www.sportsclubstats.com. 

That’s an 8.9 percent bump over the figure before the shootout victory over the Coyotes.  Best part about that web site, by the way, is the Dow Jones like graphic that charts each team’s percentage over the course of the entire season.  Suffice to say San Jose was a lock until mid-February.  After that, it was like October 1929 all over again. 

******With Colorado coming to town Monday night, the obvious topic of that trade deadline deal that sent Jamie McGinn to the Avalanche for Daniel Winnik and TJ Galiardi will be the topic of tomorrow’s print edition story. 

I’ll save most of my material for that, but obviously the trade looks pretty one-sided in Colorado’s favor if you just look at the points each player has earned since Feb. 27. 

McGinn has eight goals — including two game-winners — and four assists in 13 games with Colorado.  Winnik has two goals in the past two games — one of them a game-winner — but only one assist in the 12 games before that.  Galiardi is getting ready to come back after missing five games with an injury, but was scoreless in San Jose up to the point he was hurt. 

The Sharks, of course, make the case that the team is the sum of its parts and that we’re only starting to see the potential in that new line of Winnik, Tommy Wingels and Andrew Desjardins. 

We’ll also get back to the “what were they thinking?”  aspect at the time of the deal. 

Actually, might as well address that here, too. 

From Doug Wilson’s perspective, the pending return of Marty Havlat and the rise in Wingels’ play made it possible to trade McGinn in order to acquire the added experience and consistency that Winnik brought as well as the energy and under-your-skin element that Galiardi (obviously when healthy) can provide. 

Wilson won’t go further than mention the difference in consistency between the player he gave up and the players acquired (and that would include Dominic Moore in a separate deal).  But let’s just say for now that term probably applies to more than the scoring column. 

*****One last thing.  Got a chance last night to talk for a few minutes with Jeff Odgers, the former Sharks captain who still holds the franchise record for career penalty minutes with 1,001. 

He, along with Ron Stern and Al Iafrate, were the former players brought in from out-of-town for the Sharks Foundation’s annual fantasy camp this weekend. 

Two of Odgers’ sons are following in his hockey footsteps.  John, 18, is with Prince George of the WHL; Dakota turns 16 next month and has been drafted by Swift Current and should be in the WHL next season. 

Odgers, who’s returned to the farm in Saskatchewan, says he still follows the Sharks closely. 

“It usually works out after our games,” he said. “ I’m driving home and I can listen on my XM radio.  It’s amazing.  I can be in isolation of Saskatchewan and I can follow the team.” 

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987.  For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001.  He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time.  You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks. 

#82 D Willy: You have either a serious lack of hockey knowledge or you just have a blind hatred for Patrick Marleau.  Probably both. 

The team that wins tonight will score more goals than the other team.  How’s that for a prediction Sherlock? 

#90 flyinggrob31: I would like nothing better than for you to be right.  And if Nemo does come through, I will be among the first to sing his praises and say I was wrong. 

#92 MLBSF: Get an avatar. 

flyingrob31

@ 140

You can’t be serious?  Are you really blaming Niemi for leaving a rebound on a breakaway?  If you except your goalie to stop a breakaway and then stop a second shot, that is just ridiculous.  Does that happen sometimes?  Yes.  Is that expected of any goalie?  No.  Maybe they should change the OT shootout rules to where a player can just keep shooting until they score. 

Wonderogre

Doug H – What would cause you to not be surprised if half of Couture’s goals came from Thornton and/or Marleau?  He scored 32 last year with very negligible time with either of those guys.  Marleau, conversely, suffers noticeably when not paired with Thornton, because – while in some areas he’s better than Couture (speed, maybe shot) – he has a much more limited skill-set. 

Based on stats I found, Couture’s spent in the mid-low 20% of his on ice time with Pavelski or Thornton or Marleau on the ice at the same time.  Marleau, on the other hand, has had either Thornton or Pavs on the ice with him almost 50% of the time he’s been out there.  How much effect do you think the enormous disparity on the time each of these guys spend with the Joes have on their stats, and what does it say about Logan that despite playing one fewer game, averaging less ToI, and spending far less time on the ice with the top line or any of its usual players, he has nevertheless put up more goals (not to mention is more impressive in virtually any area of the rink and can actually hold on to the puck along the boards / in traffic)? 

Wonderogre

PS: What I would really like to see is how many goals Logan and Patty have scored that weren’t assisted by Thornton or Pavs or Couture (for Patty) or Marleau (o Logan). 

Doug H

@wonderogre,

definitely not arguing coutures qualities.  im more arguing the meme that he improves those around him.  if that were the case clowe/havlat/wingels/ferriero would all have much better numbers. 

the second line got a much needed jump when marleau centered them, and i disagree that couture is better on the boards than marleau.  im guessing marleau is necessarily being sheltered by the coach more than the coach trusts him to create with those guys.  he has a much larger body of work for the coach to fall back on that couture. 

and i agree, that would be an interesting stat to look at. 

Doug H

oh at leftwinglock is where i found the line combos. 

couture and marleau are actually pretty sheltered in terms of offensive zone starts, so neither player is relied upon to drive possession forward. 

their CORSI numbers are super similar, and not that it means much, but the overall TEAM shooting percentage is highest when Marleau is on the ice :P.

Wonderogre

#155 – I’m not really sure that any of the stats you’ve posted counter the idea that he makes his line better.  In fact, I’m not sure any stat would support or weaken that idea unless we track the production of every Sharks player when they’ve been on a line with him vs not.  You can see trends develop over time given some consistent elements (eg: Marleau’s production playing with Thornton vs playing without), but since TM’s been juggling lines this season like a casanova juggles women and combined with some of the big injury time-outs the team has experienced, it’d be a hell of a job figuring out what’s what.  That said, it has seemed to me – and I freely admit this is opinion – that all other things being equal (ie: he’s not coming back from a mugging) Couture maintains a relatively consistent level of production regardless of linemates.  Marleau’s production tends to noticeably sink, again from observation (if stats prove me wrong, fine), when the quality of his linemates drops.  Put him with Thornton or someone who can draw opponents and create time and space for him (Marleau) and he does well.  Place him on a line with guys who aren’t better than him (ie: guys who won’t necessarily do him huge favors offensively) and he suffers.  Since Couture relies far more on his brains and making plays and being in the right place at the right time than on doing everything himself, it stands to reason that in order for his production to remain steady, there are going to be additional points distributed among his linemates if ‘plays off of them,’ as it were.  Theoretically, anyway.  🙂

Put it this way: The way I see it, and I think the stats tend to bear it out, Couture scores 30 goals because he’s a good *hockey player* who shows up every night; Marleau scores 30 goals because Thornton feeds him the puck.  Obviously there’s a lot more to it, but this is my general take. 

Wonderogre

#156 – I wonder, does the corsi rating somehow account for a team’s strategic approach being to shoot at anything that moves (ok that’s more Vlasic than the team as a whole, but you get my drift 🙂 ). 

Wonderogre

PS: Not sure if you’re familiar with it, but Behind the Net does a great job of tracking linemates not as a whole line, but in terms of “how much of their time on ice did Player X spend out there with every other member of the team.”  It intersects O and D, so you get such interesting (okay, to me) details as (for example): although Burns spent most of his time partnered with Vlasic, the player he has actually been on the ice with the most is Ryane Clowe. 

Wonderogre

PPS: I guess I should clarify that I find this interesting because we often get locked into thinking about a player’s or even a line’s performance in isolation to their task.  That is, ‘Defenseman A is affected in X way because he plays with Defenseman B,’ or, ‘Winger 1 scores more points than Winger 2 because he’s got Center 1.’  But you play hockey with 4 other guys, not one or two, and the top two linemates of every single one of our top-5 forwards (since our 6th has been a rotating door) feature one forward and one defenseman (Marleau is the only one for whom a defenseman [Boyle] is actually the most consistent linemate [by not quite 2%]). 

dz

“Wallin: Ugh.  The mere acquisition of Wallin, regardless of what we gave up, was a huge loss.  The guy was awful.  DW got him because he fits DW’s fetish: gritty player with a Cup.” 

I lived in NC when Wallin was there and got to see a ton of him.  He is not really gritty per se, he is one of those unsung, positionally sound guys that makes the right play at the right time.  If healthy, he would have fit in perfectly with Blake, etc.  If you were expecting him to be physical, he is not.  He is more in line with a Vlasic type of player – make the safe, smart play. 

“Ekman: Wash – we traded what was a 50pt+ player for a second rounder (at which point you are hoping they develop into a 50pt+ player).” 

I say a win because Ekman was a non-producer in the playoffs and was going to be replaced by other means.  He had played himself off the roster and soon after played himself out of the league. 

dz

“He overpaid Niemi when he extended him last season based on one month of solid play.  He overpaid Marleau.  As far as I’m concerned, these moves resulted in a club that was very close to being great,”

Well, maybe this is where we disagree.  You are nitpicking a GM for forming only a “very close to being great” team?  😉 I think if you get to that point you’ve done a good job GMing in general! 

Marleau is paid fairly if not underpaid for the market.  Not the player, the market.  He would have made at least as much had he hit free agency. 

Neemo, I agree with you.  But, in a sense, who cares.  No assets were given up, you can buy him out or send him down or to Europe if need be.  It is not an unmoveable contract. 

Now, personally I would have tried to keep Nabby over Marleau and spent the $4M spent on Neemo on another forward. 

I actually think one of DWs strong points is the way he has run the salaries and contracts vs. the cap.  All contracts are reasonable, and thus moveable if need be.  Or won’t cause too much cap stress if bought out. 

Wonderogre

“Very close to being great” covers a wide range of things – in this case, he created a team for regular season success and has since been clueless about fixing the issues that have kept them from translating that into the playoffs. 

Re: Wallin – I wasn’t expecting him to be a hitter, but based on what was said about him around the time of the acquisition, I was expecting more of physical a shut-down defenseman than one who uses finesse (Vlasic) to make the plays.  I’m not sure when he was injured or how, but it must have failed to heal for two consecutive seasons because he was consistently one of the two worst and least reliable blue-liners on the team (Huskins being the other).  To Wilson’s credit, he eventually learned is lesson and signed a guy with a similar approach (Vandermeer) for a fraction of Wallin’s salary, but the $2.5mil we had inexplicably – and, as far as I’m concerned, stupidly – invested in him, combined with the nearly $2mil we had just as idiotically given Huskins for similarly spotty performance handicapped us when it came to addressing the team’s problems.  eg: We could have at least made a stab at keeping Malhotra. 

Re: Marleau – I agree with you that, taking his stats in isolation, he was paid fairly given market conditions.  However, I would have been much happier having another team pay him more and spending those $7mil elsewhere.  A talented young guy with a good shot and the ability to find open ice can, IMO, rack up similar numbers playing on a line with Thornton and for half the price.  As I already said, I think the team would have been (and can still be) better off by trading in a Marleau for two of a Pavelski/Couture type player who are smart and, unlike Marleau, demonstrably and consistently play better when the stakes are higher. 

re: Niemi – I don’t see his contract as easily disposed of as you do.  We can send him down, but he’s on a one-way contract so we’d still be paying him $4mil.  We could buy him out, but as he’s over 26 and has a few years at $4mil/per still left, it’s a not inexpensive option.  What still gets me is why, when the one prospect pool the team hasn’t exhausted yet is their netminders, when the presumed backup goalie was putting up equivalent or better stats for most of the year, Wilson essentially seemed to panic and hand Niemi an extension worth twice his contract at that point without even seeing how he handled himself in the post-season playing behind a defense other than the one he had in Chicago.