Sunday, March 01, 2015

Do you know the woe of San Jose...

Somewhere out there someplace, an aspiring satirist is pulling Dionne Warwick's classic ode to San Jose and reworking the lyrics, hmm, lets see. "woe for way", yes that'll work but wait...

A quick look over the song sheet suggests, that Burt Bacharach may have had it down pretty good in the original,"I may go wrong and lose my way", "Dreams turn into dust and blow away",  turns out that there may not be that much to change after all.

When it comes to the Sharks and their dreams of a Stanley Cup parade, this year (and like a few in the past), things are only getting worse as each week passes by it would seem... with San Jose once again the ultimate enigma of the NHL.

As the Sharks make ready for Monday's trade deadline, the prospect of making just one or two moves to secure a playoff spot seems more like wishful thinking, as opposed to a constructive project that might turn the tide of trouble that San Jose finds itself in at the moment.

We are among the legions of those that each year head into an NHL season and go, surely this is the year that the Sharks finally reach the Stanley Cup Final.

And, yet here we are, with the playoffs just over the horizon now, and things are getting more dire by the minute for the Sharks.

Blowing large leads, a home losing skid that left them without a win at home through February and an ongoing inability to find the answers to another puzzling season, all of it combining to leave even the thought of a Wild Card spot, starting to set in the Western sky off of Northern California.

Whether they've stopped listening to head coach Todd McLellan is now the least of the Sharks worries.

At this level and with as many veterans as they have on the San Jose roster, the Sharks should at least have some idea how to turn around the woeful spiral they are in, unless of course they don't want to, leaving GM Doug Smith some very large questions to start asking.

There seem to be structural problems with how the Sharks are approaching their work, chemistry and confidence issues as well, growing concerns that at the moment probably make the Sharks roster somewhat hard to move, even if GM Doug Smith wanted to swing some kind of major swap to try and salvage the Sharks season.

How he negotiates Deadline Day will offer up some suggestion as to the road ahead, but all indications to this point seem to indicate that unless Smith has a sudden change in his outlook for his team, the Sharks will be heading into the stretch with much the same group.

Considering the line up of talent that has been assembled for the last few years, one line from Dionne's California tribute seems to define the spot the Sharks find themselves in at this moment.

And all the stars that never were, are parking cars and pumping gas...

 


The tales of woe from San Jose can be reviewed below.

Sharks appear poised to be sellers
Sharks veterans Thornton, Marleau not asked to waive no-trade clauses
San Jose Sharks hold a "players only" get-together in attempt to regroup
Sharks' home skid continues with loss to Ottawa
The San Jose Sharks' belief system has collapsed
Sharks' free fall continues as top scorers dry up
Many questions surround Sharks after painful loss to Detroit

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