What We Learned: Where Peter DeBoer is failing the Sharks

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.) 

It's never going to be easy for teams to figure out a way to cover Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. And when the next line up after that features Phil Kessel, well, that positions your to team to succeed in a way that few third lines can.

The Sharks and the hockey world at large therefore knew going into this series that there were very obvious matchup problems that presented themselves further down the roster, and for which clear game plans would have to be constructed and executed to perfection.

And it seemed like San Jose had the horses to do that, at least in theory. You could put the Burns/Martin pairing out there against whomever you liked and handle anyone pretty well, given how good Burns is. You could put Vlasic/Braun — coming off an ultra-dominant series against the Blues — out there against anyone and know that they probably wouldn't concede too much in the way of offense. And as long as you could keep the Polak/Dillon pairing away from any one of those three scoring lines for Pittsburgh, you'd be fine.

Likewise, the Sharks' forward groups should be able to present matchup problems of their own. The Thornton line's obvious dominance speaks for itself. When your second line has Logan Couture and Patrick Marleau on it, you're likely to be in very good shape as well. Joel Ward should be able to make any third line go, matching up well against any of third line in the league that doesn't have Phil Kessel on it. And once you get down to the fourth line, that's something that should go pretty well for you.

But in the first three games of this series, clear patterns are starting to emerge which prove troubling for the Sharks in a number of very serious ways. The Sharks are getting killed on most of what should have been their break-even matchups, and only really getting a handful of players that are actually winning most of their battles.

The Burns pairing and Thornton line have been fantastic, as anyone might have expected. Vlasic and Co. aren't exactly winning the war against Sidney Crosby but they're holding their own, relatively speaking. The real problem here comes deeper in the lineup, when the first and second lines are off the ice. And depending upon your perspective, it's a problem of Peter DeBoer's own devising.

To be fair to DeBoer, at some point you run out of places to hide your worst players. Players that have been bad in this series most obviously include the Polak/Dillon pairing, and the Karlsson-Spaling-Wingels line. The pace at which that D pairing plays the game is, of course, best described as glacial. They're slow of foot, and only slightly quicker of decision.

In Games 1 and 2 of the series, Mike Sullivan used last change to dramatically exploit that, especially because in the latter of those two tilts, Dillon and Polak were getting hemmed into their own zones to the extent that 1 in every 4 or so offensive zone starts for the Penguins featured that pairing on the other side of the ice. That wasn't how they were intended to be used — DeBoer wisely deploys Burns and Martin as his most common own-zone pairing — but it's what they got stuck doing, because that's how bad they were.

There are only so many ways to cope with how badly the Penguins can dominate possession when everything is running efficiently. Every team is going to have forward groups and defense pairs that occasionally get caved in. But when they're doing so consistently, there has to be a better way.

One thing DeBoer could avoid doing, for instance, is putting the Nick Spaling line out there for defensive-zone draws against Sidney Crosby. He and Tommy Wingels are getting crushed every time they come over the boards, but especially against Crosby and Malkin; in Game 3 alone he was out-attempted 0-12 by Crosby, and 1-14 by Malkin.

This is a home game. This is a game in which the coach, to some extent, gets to set the matchups. And this is what he picked?

Yeah, I dunno.

To be fair, he was 3-22 in the game at 5-on-5, and in just 16 minutes of ice time. So again, nowhere to really hide him away. But there has to be a better way than this, right? Simply put, the Sharks were extremely lucky Spaling's line didn't concede a goal.

The same is true of Polak and Dillon. They are obviously not having a good series, and when bad things happen to the Sharks, it's typically because they've been on the ice. You can only work with what you have, but Polak in particular is a guy who very obviously cannot play the game at anything resembling a high level at this point in his career.

(And before the hockey world runs to give Doug Wilson GM of the Year, let's not forget Polak and Spaling were acquired for a pair of second-round picks.)

The less Polak's seen, the better. We talk about the Penguins being a fast club, and these are two guys who are in no way equipped to handle it.

Here's the issue: Polak and Dillon are clearly the third pair for the Sharks, but the difference between what they get and what Paul Martin get isn't as big as you might expect, or as it probably should be.

Simply put, if your bottom-pairing guys are getting that badly pummeled (and their raw CF% are 40.7 percent for Dillon and 44 percent for Polak), they need to be playing fewer than 16 minutes a night, full stop.

Even if you drop them to, say, 12 minutes a night and distribute the other four minutes evenly among the other two pairings, the impact on their performance is likely to be marginal. Dillon and Polak don't kill penalties much at all, and obviously don't get power play time. They can be safely hidden away in the lineup, and especially at home deployed exclusively against guys like Tom Kunhackl and Eric Fehr.

Even if the top-four defenders play at a slightly lower level with the extra minutes — and one doubts that would necessarily be the case — the cumulative effect on their possession, their ability to generate chances and goals, etc. would still have them well above where the bottom pairing would get the team otherwise.

One gets the feeling Burns has it in him to play more than the 26ish minutes a night he's getting in this series. It's the Cup Final. Empty the tanks. He's a terribly effective player on special teams and you don't want to chisel away at that quality, but the guy's a monster; and if Kris Letang can play more than 29 mins. a game and still be super-effective, so can he.

The Sharks are only down 2-1 in the series and all three games have been tight on the scoreboard, though not on the advanced-stat websites. Getting dramatically out-attempted and outshot in every game of this series is a good way to have that marginal difference in the outcomes not continue.

A great way to reduce that risk is to make sure the players you know aren't performing also aren't playing as much. Pretty simple solution that should yield significantly better results.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: This reads to me like Ryan Kesler pushing for the Ducks to hire Randy Carlyle. That would be truly incredible.

Arizona Coyotes: The Coyotes' relocated AHL club will reveal its new name on June 18. Guess what my dudes: It's the Roadrunners.

Boston Bruins: Wow it's almost like Frank Vatrano is really good. Hmm, crazy.

Buffalo Sabres: That's all well and good but Rasmus Ristolainen really shouldn't be your team's No. 1 D.

Calgary Flames: Randy Carlyle has now interviewed in Calgary twice. Oh my god they're really gonna try to waste the prime years of a strong young core, and the final few of Mark Giordano being a top-pairing defender. Amazing. Truly incredible.

Carolina Hurricanes: This is getting wild in a hurry.

Chicago: No one who's been paying attention should be surprised Andrew Ladd isn't coming back to Chicago.

Colorado Avalanche: The Avs want to go after Jacob Trouba, who the Jets might deal for budgetary reasons? Great, what are they giving up for him? Don't say Tyson Barrie, because he wants the same kind of contract.

Columbus Blue Jackets: There's basically no way the Blue Jackets trade the No. 3 pick. No surprise there.

Dallas Stars: Oh well this seems like a really bad idea.

Detroit Red Wings: Big shocker here but it turns out the Wings are really unlikely to sign Steven Stamkos and Alex Radulov, then trade for Kevin Shattenkirk. Crazy, I know.

Edmonton Oilers: Trading either of Taylor Hall or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins would be bonkers unless the return is going to knock Peter Chiarelli's socks off.

Florida Panthers: Here's a nice story about someone who is only slightly older than Jaromir Jagr.

Los Angeles Kings: Tidy bit of housekeeping here. That's all fine.

Minnesota Wild: I don't know what this is based on but I doubt it.

Montreal Canadiens: PK Subban swung by Boston City Hall to say what's up to bad mayor Marty Walsh. Classic troll move.

Nashville Predators: The backup spot in net is pretty much wide open. Carter Hutton will test free agency and there are about 52 guys who could step into the role in his stead.

New Jersey Devils: You don't say.

New York Islanders: Still trying to recover emotionally from the Cizikas contract. Truly an unhinged transaction.

New York Rangers: This should just say, “It's bad.”

Ottawa Senators: Nice look back at Daniel Alfredsson's time in Ottawa as he went into the city's Sport Hall of Fame this weekend.

Philadelphia Flyers: “He's bad now” and “no one wants to pay for that contract” seem to be the two biggest hurdles for the team to overcome in trading Mark Streit.

Pittsburgh Penguins: What if, and bear with me here, but what if Crosby can make anyone look great? I dunno. Just a theory I have.

San Jose Sharks: We're not really talking about how good Martin Jones has been in this series but he's been really great, with a .938 save percentage as hit team gives up almost 38 shots a night.

St. Louis Blues: Alex Steen might be out until as late as November or even December after shoulder surgery last week. Yikes.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Yeah obviously Tampa wants to re-sign Stamkos but probably they won't be able to. They're gonna try to make it work and everything but it's likely just not going to. Not the same as letting him walk.

Toronto Maple Leafs: So this kid is guaranteed to be in the NHL next season, right? I mean good lord.

Vancouver Canucks: There's no way Jim Benning isn't incorporating phrenology at the combine right?

Washington Capitals: Basically no chance Holtby isn't the Vezina winner.

Winnipeg Jets: Love this kid.

Play of the Weekend

What a postseason for non-English broadcasts.

Gold Star Award

My jumbo son Joe Thornton had two assists in Game 3. He should win the Conn Smythe in my opinion!

Minus of the Weekend

Y'know, if our announcers got as excited about cool goals as foreign-language announcers do, it would be really good and cool.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “SuperGM17” has a curious idea.

To PIT: Niederreiter, Spurgeon, Mike Reilly
To MIN: Kessel, Bonino

Signoff

I just think they're neat!

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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(All stats via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)