Thursday, April 15, 2010
Shark Weak 2010
Oy.
It has to be a terrible, terrible day to be a Sharks fan. I can't imagine the anxiety. Arguably, they have been the best and most consistent team in California since Gretzky left. But that argument breaks down around this time of year. The 00s were the decade of the Ducks in California hockey. It began with a miraculous run to game 7 of the finals in 2003 which prefaced a conference finals run in 2006, California's first Stanley Cup in 2007, a playoff appearance in 2008, and bookended by a dramatic upset of the President's Trophy winners in the first round in 2009. That President's Trophy winner, was, of course, the Sharks.
Now they are on the verge of being eclipsed by their other southern neighbor, the Kings. If not this year, then next year it seems all but certain.
The hockey press/media, who is doing everything possible to ruin the sport, have embodied the two poles of ridiculousness on this issue. Hours before the puck dropped yesterday, San Jose columnist Ross McKeon declared that a decade of underachieving in the playoffs by the Sharks is totally irrelevant to this year. Maybe he was writing a propaganda piece. Maybe he was just really optimistic. But how could he not see what was coming?
The minute the Sharks gave up the first goal, everyone other hockey journamalist began writing their "choke" storyline. And once they lost game 1 at home, they submitted them for print. Indeed, what McKeon was really blind to wasn't the statistics, nor was it the Xs and Os of executing a hockey game. Rather, it was the self-fulfilling prophecy, the snowballing effect that a loss, any loss in any game in this series would have, and the psychological consequences of it.
The San Jose Mercury News spent roughly half of their article on the game relating it to past failures. Their other article? Speculating, once again, on whether Patrick Marleau will be the fall guy for the loss. I don't think you can argue with a straight face that none of this has any effect at all. It's certainly not the whole story. As I write this, I still believe San Jose will win this series. But it will have an effect.
It has to be a terrible, terrible day to be a Sharks fan. I can't imagine the anxiety. Arguably, they have been the best and most consistent team in California since Gretzky left. But that argument breaks down around this time of year. The 00s were the decade of the Ducks in California hockey. It began with a miraculous run to game 7 of the finals in 2003 which prefaced a conference finals run in 2006, California's first Stanley Cup in 2007, a playoff appearance in 2008, and bookended by a dramatic upset of the President's Trophy winners in the first round in 2009. That President's Trophy winner, was, of course, the Sharks.
Now they are on the verge of being eclipsed by their other southern neighbor, the Kings. If not this year, then next year it seems all but certain.
The hockey press/media, who is doing everything possible to ruin the sport, have embodied the two poles of ridiculousness on this issue. Hours before the puck dropped yesterday, San Jose columnist Ross McKeon declared that a decade of underachieving in the playoffs by the Sharks is totally irrelevant to this year. Maybe he was writing a propaganda piece. Maybe he was just really optimistic. But how could he not see what was coming?
The minute the Sharks gave up the first goal, everyone other hockey journamalist began writing their "choke" storyline. And once they lost game 1 at home, they submitted them for print. Indeed, what McKeon was really blind to wasn't the statistics, nor was it the Xs and Os of executing a hockey game. Rather, it was the self-fulfilling prophecy, the snowballing effect that a loss, any loss in any game in this series would have, and the psychological consequences of it.
The San Jose Mercury News spent roughly half of their article on the game relating it to past failures. Their other article? Speculating, once again, on whether Patrick Marleau will be the fall guy for the loss. I don't think you can argue with a straight face that none of this has any effect at all. It's certainly not the whole story. As I write this, I still believe San Jose will win this series. But it will have an effect.
// posted by Rick @ 10:54 AM 
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