The Sharks are swooning again, and the mood in San Jose is getting ugly.
"Embarrassment would be too kind a word" for Thursday's 4-0 loss to Anaheim, fumes Mark Purdy at MercuryNews.com
"So who gets traded in the off-season, Patrick Marleau or Joe Thornton or both?" asks colleague Tim Kawakami.
San Jose "played like a team that didn't care," is the verdict at Fear the Fin, while the Chum Bucket is almost speechless.
Other teams have been here. Detroit entered the 2006 playoffs as the NHL's best regular season team, only to get knocked off in Round One. Same thing happened to St. Louis in 2000.
But no NHL team - perhaps no team in pro sports - can match the San Jose's shameful record of postseason flameout.
The Sharks have spent a decade at or near the top of the NHL standings. Only once have they made it as far as the Western Conference Final. That's failure, no matter how you look at it.
Words like "character," "heart," and "chemistry" are thrown around a lot by sports fans and reporters.
Mostly they're just weasel words, a last resort when one is at a loss to explain unexpected results.
But though we can't measure or even recognize them, we know that such qualities do exist. They exist in any group dynamic.
Given their consistently disappointing track record, it's time to consider character, work ethic, and other "intangibles" as serious issues for the best players on the San Jose Sharks.
The players agree. Defenseman Dan Boyle says the team is missing "desperation" while veteran forward Jeremy Roenick talks about "digging in" and "finding a way."
All eyes ultimately turn to the stars, Thornton and Marleau. They've been bystanders for most of this series, which only enhances their reputations as playoff chokers.
Such labels are usually unfair. But talent isn't the issue with these two. So as the bad results pile up, you have to think the commitment - or whatever you want to call it - is lacking.
Reporter David Pollak notes that neither Thornton nor Marleau stuck around to face the media after Thursday's debacle.
"One of my colleagues thinks that Marleau, as captain, should be waiting for the media after every game, win or lose, but that is not Marleau’s way," writes Pollak.
Is that irrelevant to how Marleau plays the game? Or at some point, do we have to acknowledge a direct link between the locker-room personality and the player on the ice?
(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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