I'll admit, it's easy to get used to dismissing the San Jose Sharks.
Every year, people look at them as a team loaded with talent, and ready to contend for the Cup.
And every year, you watch them face off against some red hot team in the playoffs, and on the wrong side of the highlight reels.
When the tradition begins to establish itself as solidly as it has now for San Jose for the last ten or so years, it becomes all too easy to dismiss them.
Admittedly, that was what I did earlier this season, when the Sharks looked good once again during the regular season. Even when they took the first game, I kind of just shrugged, and thought that the series was far from over.
But when they took Game 2, and followed that up with the solid win at Los Angeles for Game 3, they had my attention.
Wow! This San Jose Sharks team is really different! If they can dispatch such a tough LA Kings team so easily, they've gotta be good, right?
Then, of course, an epic collapse.
In my lifetime, there have only been a few such collapses. The first was the Yankees, of all teams, blowing a 3-0 lead against the team that, up until then, had been like their red-headed stepchild. But the Bosox, or the Idiots, or whatever you want to call them, came storming back, first with two close wins at Fenway, and then with two lopsided wins at Yankees Stadium.
The next time, it was in hockey, back in 2010. The Boston Bruins, another team that, like the Sharks, had a reputation for being a perennial playoff contender, only to collapse at some point in the playoffs, took a surprisingly easy 3-0 lead against the Philadelphia Flyers, only to watch the Flyers claw their way back into the series, forcing a Game 7. And Game 7 in that series epitomized the story of the series itself, in miniature. The Bruins had home ice advantage, and rocking fans. They exploded out of the gate, and took a 3-0 lead to allay the worst fears of their fans. Then, the Flyers came to life, and one goal at a time, first clipped the Bruins sizable lead, then eliminated it by tying the thing up, and then, improbably, took a 4-3 lead themselves. Surely, in the storied history of the Bruins, one of the original six teams of the NHL, this had to be the low point.
Now, the Sharks. A solid, 3-0 series lead just days ago, really. Everything was going swimmingly for them.
And then, the worst case scenario for a sports team. An epic collapse, the likes of which seem unlikely to be seen or paralleled anytime too soon.
The Sharks scored an improbably high 13 goals in the first two games, seemingly overwhelming the Kings. Overall, in the first four games (including the Game 4 loss), the San Jose Sharks scored 20 goals!
But for the last three games of the series, the Sharks scored a total of 2 goals.
What happened?
Well, injuries, surely. Some turmoil at the goalie position. And, perhaps, a monumental momentum swing, in which the Kings, a team that won the Cup two seasons ago and almost made it back to the Finals last season, finally showed the poise that they have proven to possess the past few seasons.
And the Sharks did what we have grown used to from them: they let go of the tremendous promise that many felt they were ready to finally follow up on. They lacked the killer instinct, and found themselves suddenly unable to get anything going. San Jose went from being on the brink of an improbably huge and convincing victory, to being beaten down to an epic defeat.
Few collapses in sports can compare to this one. There were the series that I already mentioned. In football, the closest thing would be the Houston Oilers of the 1992 season, who held a 35-3 lead against the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Wildcard Game, only to find a way to lose that game. Or, maybe the New England Patriots in the 2007 season, going undefeated and breaking all sorts of records, then largely outplaying the Giants through most of the Super Bowl, holding a lead in the last minute of play, so close to the perfect season that they could taste it. And then, watching as the Giants marched down the field, with the assistance of a miracle play, and eventually scoring a touchdown that sealed the epic letdown for the Pats.
In fact, just this past postseason in the NFL, the Chiefs gave up a 28-point lead to the Colts, as they took the first exit on the playoff road to the Super Bowl.
Perhaps a few years ago, the Canucks in hockey were in a similar boat. They were a very talented team, getting better each year, and seemingly on the verge of a break through. In 2010-2011, it seemed to be their year. They had an undefeated streak of almost twenty games during the regular season - a franchise record. They had the best record in the league, winning the President's Trophy. In the playoffs, they actually had to get past a seven game series in which they had taken a 3-0 series lead against their then arch-rivals, and defending Cup champions then and now, the Chicago Blackhawks. But Vancouver got through that, and got through the Western Conference playoffs to make it to the Cup Finals, against Boston. They took the first two games, but got blasted in Boston. Took Game 5 in Vancouver, and were one win away from hoisting the Cup, for what would have been the first (and only) time in franchise history.
Instead, they lost both Game 6 (in Boston) and Game 7 (in Vancouver) by a combined 8-1. What had worked all season worked no longer. The Canucks just could not do anything right anymore, and instead of a defining victory, they had to suffer through the indignity of watching someone else celebrate winning the title on their home ice.
That was the most recent time that I can specifically remember a hockey team losing a game, and a series, quite as devastating as this. Losing is never easy to take, of course. But when you lose in the manner that these teams do, it is particularly hard to bounce back from.
Which is why it will be interesting to see how the San Jose Sharks respond to this. Because, truth be told, they are a good team. True, they have not been able to get to that next level, to advance to the Cup Finals and, perhaps, even have that chance to lift the Cup, to sip the sweet waters of victory from it. But they need a bit of tweaking. That does not mean that they need a major overhaul, that they need to purge their lineup of everyone that's there right now. If they do that, if they get rid of the coach and many of the players, then you will know that they are panicking.
This is the time that they need to stick together. True, not every team recovers from devastating losses like that. The Houston Oilers of the early nineties didn't. They did well during the regular season in 1993,, going 12-4 during the regular season, good enough for the second seed. But they lost a big lead in their first and only playoff game, and followed that up with years of losing afterward. The Vancouver Canucks never recovered from losing the Stanley Cup Finals. A talented team that seemed on the brink of greatness has since won a total of one playoff game (not series), and did not even qualify for the playoffs this season. The Yankees remained contenders, but by their standards, performed subpar for numerous seasons after their 2004 playoff collapse.
But the Boston Bruins rebounded from the humiliation of losing a series where they were up 3-0 in the series by winning the Cup the next season. The Patriots remained highly competitive since that loss in Super Bowl XLII, although they have not won the Super Bowl since.
Other sports figures varied in the way that they responded to horrendous losses. Mike Tyson never fully recovered from his loss to Buster Douglas to become as dominant as he once had been. But Lennon Lewis, after getting knocked out in a humiliating way to Rahman in South Africa, came back to win his title back, and become one of the most dominant heavyweights in recent history. Muhammad Ali recovered from bad losses several times, to keep winning his title back. And it took a while, but George Foreman recovered after losing his aura of invincibility to Muhammad Ali. Roger Federer recovered from losing an epic Wimbledon Final to Nadal by achieving the career Grand Slam the next year, and reasserting himself as the world's number one tennis player (although it should be noted that Nadal was injured for much of that year).
These examples may be relevant, or they may not be. The Boston Bruins should serve as the greatest inspiration for these San Jose Sharks, since it is the same sport, and the most recent collapse from a team that once held a 3-0 series lead. All of the talk of that franchise being defined by perennially underachieving would vanish if they should come back to win the Stanley Cup next year. Or, it can become their lasting legacy for this period in franchise history if they begin to fade away, like the Vancouver Canucks did.
Time will tell...
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