Usually it sounds like an excuse when a player such as the San Jose Sharks' Jeremy Roenick says of the winning goal in Tuesday night's overtime loss to the Dallas Stars: "He just got it over me and it hit my stick. It was another bad break. It's amazing how we can't get a bounce in this series."
This time, though, there may be some truth to what Roenick's saying. It's been a bizarre second round in the NHL playoffs this spring. The games are close, but the series are not - and three could end in sweeps, with Pittsburgh, Detroit and Dallas all poised to go into the third round, rested and relatively healthy, setting the stage for a dynamic Final Four. In Colorado, you feel a little for the injury-prone Avalanche, although they'll get no sympathy from a Detroit team that essentially ran out of defencemen in last year's playoff loss to the Anaheim Ducks in the third round.
The Sharks, meanwhile, a lot of people's choice to win it all, have been competitive with the Stars for most of three games; the problem is, Dallas is making plays when it matters and San Jose isn't. Is that playoff experience? Coaching? Goaltending? Probably a little of all of the above. The Stars' Marty Turco has outplayed the Sharks' Evgeni Nabokov in the series. It may well be that Nabokov's heavy workload this season has caught up to him in these playoffs. Sharks' coach Ron Wilson can be a prickly sort - generally, at this time of year, he tries to create an us-against-the-world mentality, same way he did when he was coaching Team USA in the 1996 World Cup. It's part of his modus operandi; he thinks that works at crunch time; his results, in playoffs past, suggest otherwise.
But mostly, the Sharks have been decent for long stretches at a time; the difference is they don't seem to have a catalyst of the Brenden Morrow type, who isn't as stylish or slick as some of San Jose's skill players, but seems to have an impact on virtually every game. If San Jose exits in the second round again this season, it is unlikely that they will stand pat with this crew again. Wilson's shelf life as a coach has surely run its course; it may well be that general manager Doug Wilson may be prepared to dangle one of his skilled forwards in exchange for a Morrow type - to bring a little more grit and sandpaper to a team that annually seems to amount to far less than the sum of its many quality but underachieving individual parts.
