Jump to content
The Official Site of the Vancouver Canucks
Canucks Community

Are the Sharks Who We Thought They Were?


BureisBest

Recommended Posts

Going into this series, we were considered the favourites, because we are in the #3 spot, facing a #6 team, and subsequently because we have home-ice advantage.

This should, at the least, be considered more of a #4 vs. #5 match-up, as San Jose only finished the season 2 points behind our total, and played in a division much more challenging than ours.

In our soon-to-be-extinct Northwest Division, we had 3 of the worst 4 teams in the Western Conference (Colorado, Edmonton, Calgary). The other team (Minnesota), only got into the last spot of the playoffs by winning a tie-breaker with Columbus. When San Jose played those 4 teams from our division this year, they racked up a 9-3 record.

In SJ's Pacific Division, no team finished lower than #11 in the Western Conference, and they represent 3 of the top 6 West seeds in the playoffs (both stats eclipse our division and the Central division). When we played the other 4 teams from San Jose's division this year, (Anaheim, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas) we racked up an average 6-6 record.

I think we can discern from those facts that if us and San Jose switched divisions (all other things equal, just looking at competition), they would likely be the #3 seed this year, if not #2.

In short, they played the best competition in the West all year, while we played the worst, and they still came within 2 points of our total.

Oh, and there's also these facts:

- We went 0-3 vs. the Sharks this year.

- They had the fewest home regulation losses in the entire NHL (only lost twice, Chicago lost three).

- They started the season 7-0.

- If you rank by points and not division winners, we would be the #5 seed and SJ remains #6.

They may be a #6 seed in this tournament, but we are playing one of the best teams in the NHL, and if they get on a roll, (and if Patrick Marleau gets on a roll), look out. The importance of game 2 on home-ice, before heading to the Shark Tank, cannot be overstated.

* To be fair I also want to point out that San Jose had the most regulation losses on the road (14) of any team in the playoffs (West and East). They managed to win game 1 in regulation in our rink, though, which has to be huge for their confidence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good points....They are two fairly evenly matched teams,but I would have to give the edge to the Canucks because of their pedigree (came within a game of the SC)...I don't buy the regular season stats and still think the Canucks are the better team..Now they just have to put it together and demonstrate it

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Sharks are also a terrible team. They had 1 good goal which was Couture's snipe, which wasn't even that great since someone was pushed into Luongo.. The other 2 Shark goals were just stupid lucky bounces. They can't score just as badly as we can't.

This series won't be about who's the better team, moreso who will play the least worst.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...