|
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/sports/hockey/stanley-cup-penguins-and-sharks.html?ref=sports&_r=0
The Stanley Cup finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the San Jose Sharks, set to begin Monday in Pittsburgh, will showcase magnetic stars on both sides and two teams seeking postseason redemption.
The Penguins seemed poised for a potential dynasty after consecutive finals appearances in 2008 and in 2009, when they hoisted the Cup for the third time in franchise history. But the Penguins had a series of disappointing postseasons characterized at times by a lack of discipline, porous goaltending and anemic offense. They made a string of moves this season that included a coaching change, multiple trades, minor league call-ups and free-agent signings, all of which have breathed life into the club around its captain, Sidney Crosby.
Pittsburgh (48-26-8) was the hottest team at the end of the regular season, winning 14 of its last 16 games to finish with the second-best record in the East. In the playoffs, the Penguins knocked off the Rangers, who eliminated them last year; the league’s best team, the Capitals; and the defending Eastern Conference champions, the Lightning.
The Sharks (46-30-6), who entered the N.H.L. in 1991, are making their first appearance in the finals. After finishing the regular season with the sixth-best record in the Western Conference, they stormed through the postseason, defeating the Los Angeles Kings, the Nashville Predators and the St. Louis Blues.
The Sharks have their deepest roster in years. They are the highest-scoring team in the playoffs, averaging 3.5 goals per game (the Penguins are second at 3.22). And San Jose has the top three point scorers in the playoffs: Logan Couture (24), Joe Pavelski (22) and Brent Burns (20).
Fear the Beard
If the Stanley Cup were awarded for the best playoff beards, the Sharks would have already won it. Joe Thornton and Burns took the tradition of the playoff beard so seriously that they started growing theirs back in training camp. Burns’s feral fur has long been a staple of his aesthetic, but Thornton’s has gained more fame during the postseason. So alluring was Thornton’s beard that the Blues’ David Backes gave it a tug when the two squared off in the conference finals. Thornton’s look earned a spot on Jimmy Fallon’s superlatives segment on “The Tonight Show” as “Most Likely to Get Manscaped at Petco.”
Memorable Monikers
San Jose also has the edge in nicknames. When the Sharks acquired Thornton in 2005, he was already known as Jumbo Joe. The next season brought Pavelski to the team, and the announcer Randy Hahn called the two, now linemates, Big Joe and Little Joe. To confuse the matter, Pavelski is also known as the Big Pavelski, in a reference to the Coen Brothers film “The Big Lebowski.” Defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic, naturally, carries the sobriquet Pickles, while Burns, for reasons mentioned above, is known as Chewie, a pseudonym he played up at the All-Star skills competition by donning a Chewbacca mask.
A Cup at Last?
The Sharks have cornered the market on veterans thirsting to quaff the bubbly from the Stanley Cup. They have five players — Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Paul Martin, Joel Ward and Dainius Zubrus — who are 35 or older and have never won the Cup. In fact, only two players on the San Jose roster have even dressed for a Stanley Cup finals game — Zubrus and goaltender Martin Jones.
The Pittsburgh assistant Jacques Martin started coaching in the N.H.L. in 1986, but this is his first finals appearance. He narrowly missed the glory years in Colorado after the team relocated from Quebec. He left the soon-to-be two-time champions to become the head coach of Ottawa in 1996. He was gone from the Senators by the time they reached the final in 2007.
Behind the Benches
For the second time in his career, Sharks Coach Peter DeBoer made the Stanley Cup finals in his first season with a team. He also led the Devils to the finals in 2012, when they lost to the Kings in six games. DeBoer, 47, also succeeded at the junior level, capturing the Memorial Cup in 2003 with the Kitchener Rangers.
In Pittsburgh, Mike Sullivan, 48, replaced Mike Johnston in December, and the Penguins went 33-16-5 before winning three playoff series. An assistant of John Tortorella’s with the Lightning, the Rangers and the Canucks, Sullivan was last a full-time N.H.L. head coach with the Bruins in 2003-4 and 2005-6, when Thornton was the star of the team. That is not Sullivan’s only connection to the Sharks; he played for San Jose during its first three seasons in the N.H.L.
Between the Pipes
This is one of the more unusual goalie matchups in recent memory. Penguins goalie Matt Murray, 22, had just 13 games of N.H.L. experience before these playoffs, but he stepped in for the injured Marc Andre-Fleury. The Penguins’ team leader in career wins and the man who backstopped to the two finals and a Stanley Cup, Fleury was cleared to play in the second round but has made just two appearances and one start, a loss, in the postseason.
Murray’s counterpart, Jones, was traded twice this past off-season, first from Los Angeles to Boston and then from Boston to San Jose, and is in his first full season as an N.H.L. starter. Jones, 26, was undrafted, but he signed with the Kings after a tryout. He backed up Jonathan Quick for two seasons, making two brief appearances during Los Angeles’s Cup run in 2014.
Mr. Clutch
If you need a crucial postseason goal, Ward, the 35-year-old San Jose forward, has had a flair for the dramatic during his nine-year career. He beat Henrik Lundqvist and the buzzer last year, scoring a game-winner with 1.3 seconds left for the Capitals. In 2012, his overtime goal in Game 7 for Washington eliminated the defending champion Bruins. He scored two goals, including the game-winner, in the Sharks’ series clincher against the Blues on Wednesday.
In big moments, the Penguins turn to Crosby, who had three game-winning goals in the conference finals against the Lightning. That included a Game 2 overtime winner that prevented Pittsburgh from falling to 0-2 in the series. Crosby’s most notable crunchtime tally came in a different uniform, when he scored the gold-medal-winning goal in overtime for the host country, Canada, against the United States at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
Redemption Stories
The off-season’s biggest trade was right wing Phil Kessel’s departure from Toronto to Pittsburgh. Kessel was widely maligned as the Leafs faded into oblivion, and his start with the Penguins did little to silence his critics. Though he posted his lowest point total in a full campaign since 2007-8, Kessel gained momentum during the season, picking up 38 points in 45 games after Jan. 1. He provided a much-needed spark in the absence of the injured Evgeni Malkin late in the season. During the playoffs, Kessel has excelled, with nine goals and nine assists.
Once cast as a player who did not relish the spotlight, Thornton has been a huge part in shedding a negative postseason reputation for himself and his team. He was stripped of his captaincy in 2014 after San Jose collapsed in the playoffs. But he has been a point-per-game player in the regular season and playoffs this season for the Sharks. One of the game’s great passers, he was second in the N.H.L. in assists with 63, and he has 15 so far in the playoffs.
Rule to Know
What rule do you most need to know when watching the finals this year? Thanks to the new coach’s challenge system, it is the offside rule.
Under the system, coaches can challenge goals for offside or goaltender interference, though in the regular season and playoffs, officials have been unlikely to change their minds about goalie interference. Coaches lose their one timeout if they decide to challenge a call.
Offside is a fairly simple rule in hockey: No offensive player can cross the blue line into the offensive zone before the puck does, unless the puck was carried or passed there by an opposing player. But this season, the N.H.L. has given its linesmen and referees new tools to verify whether offensive players were offside on scoring plays. For the playoffs, cameras were installed on both sides of each blue line to aid coaches’ challenges, and numerous goals have been disallowed, some by the smallest of margins.
Watch the back skate. A player is considered offside if at least one skate does not have contact with the neutral zone or the blue line when the puck crosses into the offensive zone. On a few occasions in the playoffs, goals have come off the board because a player’s back foot was off the ice in the neutral zone before the puck completely crossed the blue line. And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
Okay Sports
