What's Wrong with San Jose?

You would think that a team who has five division titles, was top ten in the league in points four years in a row, and has an outstanding roster filled with super-stars, would absolutely, undoubtedly have a chance at the Cup, year-after-year, right?

Well, that cannot be said about the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks have been nothing but a giant disappointment over the last ten years, giving the fans more than a little hope for success, and then taking it all away during the playoffs.

With the amount of stardom on that team, surely winning shouldn’t be a problem for them, but even Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, and Dany Heatley can’t help the team to the next level, a level they’ve been waiting to reach for what feels like eternity by now.

Let’s look at the statistics of their season/post-season since the 2005 lockout:

Season Year Post-season

113 P (2) ’09-‘10 15 GP, 8 W
117 P (1) ’08-’09 6 GP, 2 W
108 P (2) ’07-’08 13 GP, 6 W
107 P (6) ’06-’07 11 GP, 6 W
99 P (11) ’05-’06 11 GP, 6 W

What this record shows is a team that’s outstanding during the season, but can’t make it passed the second, and sometimes first, round of the playoffs.

The Sharks are usually one of the more talked about teams throughout the season, and year after year they are one of the higher picks for a successful postseason.

So what can be done about this team?

This offseason, they denied Evgeni Nabokov, their #1 goalie since the ’00-’01 season, a contract renewal, in which he ended up leaving to play in Europe. Now they are left with some unproven goalies, and a team tired of hard-work with no Stanley Cup pay. Rob Blake, their captain over last season just retired, and so now is the time to ask what the next step for this organization is.

Is it time to scrap it all get some new names and faces, or is the Marleau-Thornton-Heatley line the saving grace for the team?

Nothing can truly be answered until the season starts.

But you can take a look at the plethora of teams throughout history that have never won a Cup, for example St. Louis. The real question the Sharks need to ask themselves is whether or not they are going to fall to that reputation of teasing the NHL by being a great team that never comes through post-season, or if they are going to make the necessary adjustments to turn things around.

August 1st is the start of the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” a whole week dedicated to the ferocious sea creatures. Perhaps that should be the day the Sharks organization takes a look at what they have and starts to fix this broken-record of a team.

I don’t have the answers for what they need; maybe it’s teamwork, or more youth. But the California fans deserve to see those blue jerseys lifting a cup already.