The schedule is as follows:

The games highlighted in yellow denote back-to-backs

As has been much publicized over the past few months, the Sharks will be starting their season in Stockholm, Sweden against the Columbus Blue Jackets in a back-to-back “home and home.” The Sharks will technically start their season at home, but their first game in the Tank is also their first game back on North American soil against the Atlanta Thrashers. Their first short homestand will also include a game against the Carolina Hurricanes, before they go on the road for a Northwest division road trip.

The three Eastern Conference teams the Sharks play twice are the Washington Capitals, Buffalo Sabres, and New Jersey Devils. The Sharks played both the Capitals and Sabres twice last year, and replaced the Flyers with the Devils.

As with last year, the Washington Captials have not beat the Sharks at the Tank in now 14 years. However, Ovechkin did manage to score a goal against the Sharks last year, breaking that streak. It still would be nice to see the long record at the Tank hold up. The games will be on February 8 at Washington, and February 17 at San Jose.

Last year’s away game with the Sabres marked only the second and final time the Sharks were shut out all season, with the first being a 1-0 shootout loss. It was notable because it was right before the Olympics, and helped American Hero Ryan Miller get back on track. The games will be on December 9 at Buffalo, and January 6 at San Jose.

The only game the Sharks played the Devils last year was a 4-3 loss, and the first game after the Olympics. However, it was a notable game because the Sharks had a 3 goal third period, just falling short of a comeback. The next three games the Sharks would set an NHL record with the most consecutive regulation comebacks after being down entering the third period. The games will be on October 27 at San Jose, and February 11 at New Jersey.

National Television Targets

Last season, the Sharks were on Versus four times, and NBC none (as has been par for the course since they switched away from regional broadcasts). Unlike the season before last, the Sharks didn’t even have an option of being picked up on NBC last season. However, due to their strong postseason and high ratings garnered in their series against Detroit (set record for highest semifinal ratings on Versus) and Chicago (Game 4 set a record on NBC), there would probably be more of an incentive for the national broadcasts to pick up a Sharks game or five.

Versus only broadcasts on Mondays and Tuesdays (barring any special circumstances) and NBC only broadcasts on Sundays and after the new year (except for the Winter Classic). So, with that in mind, here are some candidates for possible national broadcasts:

Versus:

October 8/9 vs/at Columbus Blue Jackets – These two games will be on Versus, I guarantee it. I mean, they’re in Stockholm and part of the Europe season opener. If they don’t broadcast these two games on Versus, something went wrong with Versus or something.
November 2, at Minnesota – Versus likes Minnesota for some reason. And they had a Sharks-Wild game last season. Plus, it’s the highly anticipated game where Brad Staubitz plays the Sharks for the first time since the trade!
November 15, vs Los Angeles Kings – There’s the whole Northern California/Southern California rivalry, and the Kings are actually good now. Then again, they are both Californian teams, and it’s at the Tank, which Versus hates. Maybe not.
November 30/December 6/February 22, vs/at Detroit Red Wings – Already a great match-up before last season’s playoffs, but last season’s semifinals series just makes these three games even more attractive to Versus. The two in Detroit are more likely of the three to happen, because of the aforementioned aversion to San Jose.
February 8, at Washington Capitals – The Capitals are one of Versus’s favorite teams, and a matchup against the Sharks would pit two of the most dynamic teams in the league against each other.
March 1, versus Colorado Avalance – A rematch of the first round series from last season, Versus also showed a Sharks-Avs game last season (albeit because of Joe Sakic night and the season opener).
March 14, at Chicago Blackhawks – Western Conference Finals rematch, two of the best teams in the West, and a proven ratings winner. This and one of the Detroit dates are probably the most likely to be chosen outside of the Stockholm games.

NBC:

January 9, at Anaheim Ducks – Mainly because it’s one of only two Sunday games they will play after the new year begins. It would be nice if NBC recognized the Sharks/Ducks rivalry, but fat chance of that happening.
February 13, at Florida Panthers – Mainly because it’s one of only two Sunday games they will play after the new year begins. Like with Anaheim, fat chance that they’ll show a game between a California and Florida team.

Basically, don’t hold your breath for an NBC game this season, unless the Sharks make it to the Western Conference Finals again.

Month by Month Breakdown

October
5* home, 4 road, 13,947.773 miles traveled

The second-shortest month in terms of games due to the season starting mid-October and the travel from Sweden, it also has the most miles traveled due to the travel to and from Sweden. All non-playoff teams except for New Jersey and Colorado, although a lot of those teams were somewhat competitive. The Sharks should come out with a winning record.

*One of the home games the Sharks play is actually in Sweden.

November
8 home, 6 road, 9,339.591 miles traveled

Fairly even in terms of home and road games, this is also the month that falls in the middle in terms of travel (which is kind of bad, seeing as they still travel almost 10,000 miles). This month also features a lot of non-playoff teams, and only two teams from the Eastern Conference. No travel to the east, though, which is a plus. Should also be a winning record.

December
5 home, 10 road, 12,822.08 miles traveled

They start off the month with an eastern road trip from hell – all playoff teams, including the two Eastern Conference finalists and Detroit. And then they come back to play Chicago. Joy. This month is not going to be a fun month, between playing Detroit once and Chicago twice, as well as a lot of early starts. Plus, it has the second most miles traveled. Should still get a winning record, but not overwhelmingly so as with the first two months.

January
7 home, 5 road, 5,670.62 miles traveled

Second shortest month in terms of travel, which is partially because of the All Star game at the end of the month. It marks the second return of Ron Wilson with the Toronto Maple Leafs coming to the Tank, but it unfortunately doesn’t look like the second return of Toskala as well. Unless he signs with a different team, of course. Will be the first time Brad Staubitz returns to San Jose, though!

February
3 home, 10 road, 12,270.96 miles traveled

This month will be the one where we’ll wonder if the HP Pavilion actually exists or if it’s just a mythical structure from our dreams. Third most miles traveled – and not by much – and the second Eastern Conference road trip, including a game agains the Boston Bruins which will begin at 10am (!!). This is the last month the Sharks will go to the Eastern time zone. Some very competitive teams during this month – I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the Sharks go .500 or even compile a losing record. I mean, I doubt it, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

March
10 home, 4 road, 6,372.589 miles traveled

This is the month where we go, “It’s no place like home,” and forget that you actually have to travel. There is an emphasis on the Pacific Division teams, although a few other Western Conference teams – and a lone Eastern Conference team – are sprinkled in there. The last time the Sharks will travel out of division is on the 14th, to Chicago. They should probably accrue a record above .500.

April
3 home, 2 road, 1,259.368 miles traveled

Easily the least travel the Sharks have, what with only playing 5 games and only within the division. With so few games – and at least three of them being against playoff teams – this month is hard to predict the record. Depends on whether or not the Ducks go into rebuilding mode, and whether Phoenix’s season last year was a fluke built off of many, many shootout wins (probably not, but something to consider).

Games of Note

October 8/9, against Columbus – The season opener and one in Stockholm, to boot. It’s fun to watch how other countries treat sports. As long as it’s not South Africa. Those vuvuzelas are making me crazy.

November 24, versus Chicago – The first rematch between the two Western Conference finalists, however different they may look. Should be a fun – if nerve-wracking – game.

December 2, at Ottawa – The first time Dany Heatley returns to Ottawa since the trade. I expect a lot of boos. A LOT of boos.

December 8, at Philadelphia – Always fun to go to Philly, what with them being the Prince of Wales Trophy winners and having Alternate Captain Elbows (who I have since admitted to not minding, particularly if he is playing a team that I don’t like). Also: BOOOOOOOOSH!

January 11, versus Toronto – I don’t know why, I just like games where the Sharks play the Leafs. Wait, I know why – the Sharks tend to win, and Leafs fans are hilarious.

February 5, at Boston – Only the third time Thornton has returned to Boston since The Trade (Sharks seem to have a lot of those, don’t they?), and it should be interesting. If Scott Nichol re-signs with the Sharks, I’d love to see him knock down Zdeno Chara again.

February 17, versus Washington – It’s always fun when the Capitals come to the Tank. Well, fun for the Sharks. Not so fun for the Capitals.

April 9, versus Phoenix – The final game of the season and Fan Appreciation Night at the Tank, it should be a good one.

Any game against any team Nabokov signs with – Evgeni Nabokov is awesome, and will be wearing a different sweater for the first time in his NHL career. While at the time of writing I have no idea which team Nabby will be with, I am definitely looking forward to applauding our quirky Russian/Kazakh goalie for his time with the Sharks.

In Conclusion

The Sharks will play back-to-back 14 times this year, up one from last season, and none of them will feature two home games in a row (although the two Sweden games will be in the same place, only one is considered a home game). The shortest distance between non-Sweden back-to-backs is 176.467 miles (between Edmonton and Calgary), and the longest is 802.73 miles (between Dallas and Chicago).

The All Star Game returns this year, so no two-week break. The All Star Game will be January 29-30 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Sharks likely won’t have any starters (since Sharks fans tend to not start any massive fan campaigns), but will likely have at least two representatives, being one of the top teams in the league. I suspect Logan Couture will be tabbed for the Young Stars game, maybe even one of their goalies.

October, December, and February all suck in terms of travel, with at least 12,000 miles each month, and a total of 39,040.813 miles. Some teams don’t travel that much during the entire season.

There are four early afternoon games (two noon, two 2pm). But there are also two morning games – one at 10am in Boston, and one at 11am in Montreal. I am not looking forward to those two games.

The total miles traveled is a whopping 61,682.98 miles. That’s 14,727 miles more than last season. And last season they decreased their travel amount by around 10,000 miles than the season before, where they by far traveled the most miles. Rarely – if ever – does a team break 60K miles traveled in a season, and the Sharks are doing it. Sweden adds to that, as does their trips to Montreal and Boston, the two furthest teams from San Jose. Makes me question why the Sharks would be chosen for Europe in a year where they have to travel the furthest anyways, but whatever.

As I live in a dorm, I can’t subscribe to Center Ice, and I’m hesitant about using torrents through the university’s internet connection. Well, I’m just hestitant about using torrents in general, but that’s just me. So I’m left with two options: quasi-legal internet streams and NHL Gamecenter. Not wanting to rely on third party streamers that could get shut down at any time (like they did mid-way through last season), I decided to invest in a season of NHL Gamecenter.

In the following table, I’ve broken down the games in terms of which broadcast feed Gamecenter uses. Yellow (or goldenrod, if you prefer) represents the Sharks broadcast. Gray is Versus. White represents the other teams’.

*Denotes that it was the only feed of the game

Obviously, there is a bit of discrepency. Through 20 games this season, the other team has gotten 13 broadcasts, the Sharks have 5, and Versus has the last 2.

In general, the NHL likes to use the feed of the away team, likely because fewer of those fans would be at the game and therefore not watching the broadcast on Gamecenter and such. That is certainly supported by the fact that the Sharks feed has not been picked up for one Sharks home game this year.

But the Sharks also have a lot more road games than home games – 12 road as opposed to 8 home – and so it would be logical that they’ve had more feeds on Gamecenter picked up. No dice.

The Sharks have played 60% of their games on the road thus far, yet they only have 25% of the Gamecenter feeds. Even if you take out the Versus broadcasts – which fans of both teams have to suffer through and aren’t availabe on Gamecenter – the Sharks still only represent 28% of the feeds. That’s a 32% discrepency.

Now, I’m a fan of Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda. I understand some other viewers, especially those who are fans of the opposing team, might not enjoy their occasional banter and in-jokes, but isn’t that the same with all regional announcers? I mean, there are a few that I don’t mind listening to – the Stars announcers, for one – but there are quite a few who I just find so annoying. And I don’t want to have to listen to them night after night, extolling the virtues of their own team while calling players on the Sharks “Vuhlasic,” “Veesee,” “Nuh-back-of,” and “Mar-LOW.” Or constantly mistaking Staubitz for McGinn. That kind of gets on my nerves after a while.

Anyways, back to Gamecenter. I’ll continue to keep track of which feed they choose to use throughout the season, giving periodic updates (notably at the half-way point). Hopefully, the disparity in which feed will even out by the end of the season.

Darryl Sutter

Sutter’s teams were fairly mediocre, borderline playoff teams. The team was abysmal on the PP, with 18.1% being both the highest and almost a good two percentage points above the second-highest. The PK and overall defensive-mindedness on special teams made the Sharks an absolutely average team overall in both STP and aSTP, although the aSTP did drop in 02-03 when they practically imploded and finished 14th in the West. The fact that the aSTP was largely higher than the STP backs up the defense-first method that Sutter used, as the PP didn’t give up more goals than the PK scored.

Ron Wilson

When Ron Wilson was brought in, both the team’s special teams and its overall play improved dramatically, even earning the team’s only WCF appearance. Both the STP and aSTP are above average, and were for three of his four years as head coach (05-06 is the anomaly, strange considering Thornton’s Hart and Cheechoo’s Rocket Richard). But while the special teams are good overall, the STP and aSTP are bolstered by strong defensive play, as evidenced by the good PK percentage and the somewhat mediocre PP conversion rate. The last year of his position of head coach saw him garner much criticism for a stagnant PP, and the numbers don’t exactly refute that. The average aSTP being higher than the average STP can partially be attributed to the defensive-minded play, but a look at the season-by-season breakdown shows that only 06-07 was where the PP played really well defensively. It looks like the PP just was not that good under Ron Wilson, and was bolstered by the strong PK.

Todd McLellan

It’s almost unfair to judge Todd McLellan’s performance at this juncture with only one year of coaching under his belt, but there is no question that compared to his predecessors, the Sharks’ STP and aSTP was much better. Both metrics exceeded both Wilson’s and Sutter’s highs, although it could be attributed to a higher-skilled team. The PP was also much more effective, and when backed up with strong defensive play as well, the special teams were much better. The PP was not very good defensively, but with a greater offensive threat on the PK it made up the difference. Overall, McLellan exceeded his two most recent predecessors in the case of special teams, although one season is a bit too soon to completely draw a conclusion.

But while that stat is simple enough to give a rough overview of how well a team generally performs on special teams, it does not include short-handed goals, which is an important part in any special teams play. Emotionally, it can either be a rallying point or a deflator. Stats-wise, it makes the power play less effective and the penalty kill more effective.

Thus, in what seems like a far too simple formula, I have designed a metric for how effective special teams are in a general sense while including SHG and SHGA. It is not adjusted for odd kinds of special teams situations, like 5-on-3 or 4-on-3, but it still is a bit more accurate than just relying on a combination of PP and PK percentages. The formula is as follows:

A team with an even aSTP would get a 1.000 – meaning that not only does the team score as many goals as they prevent on the power play, but that the shorthanded goals scored and allowed are even. Anything over 1.000 means that the combination of offense and defense for special teams benefits the team, and under a 1.000 means that it’s detrimental.

Note that all the numbers are from last season, so the rankings will likely change pretty drastically when this season starts. I included each team’s STP as well, to give a comparison, as well as all the stats that I used to compile aSTP. Things to note:

The inclusion of SHG really helped the New Jersey Devils, who rose from a below-average STP to a slightly above-average aSTP because of a defensively-minded power play (only 4 SHGA) and a good amount of offense on thier penalty kill (12 SHG). The Philadelphia Flyers rose to the top of the league because of the 16 SHG they scored and the single SHGA they allowed.

Conversely, the Calgary Flames were hurt by the nine fewer SHG they scored than they allowed. The New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Los Angeles Kings were also hurt

What’s interesting to me is that the Minnesota Wild are so highly ranked despite not making the playoffs. Same with Buffalo and Ottawa – it suggests that a lot of their success stems from special teams, while they have problems while playing 5-on-5. And then the Columbus Blue Jackets are the fourth-worst team, and yet made the playoffs pretty comfortably. The trend is definitely that playoff teams tend to have above 1.000 aSTPs, but with four playoff teams with sub-1.000s and four non-playoff teams with above 1.000 aSTPs it suggests that special teams aren’t necessarily the make-or-break aspect of a team’s success.

Disclaimer: I literally worked this out during history class, so sorry if the math somehow turns out to be wrong. I checked the formula several times, but there’s always a chance for human error. Stats retrieved from NHL.com.

Actually, not really. What I’ve decided to do was to compile the stats from all three games and post them in an easy-to-read table, since the boxscores used for the series aren’t the easiest things to decode.

Top 3 Goal Scorers
T-1. Michael D’Orazio, Kevin Henderson – 2
T-3. Joe Loprieno, Corey Quirk, Nicholas Petrecki, Marc Cantin, C.J. Stretch, Daniel Erlich, Dean Strong – 1

Top 3 Assist Getters
1. Dean Strong – 4
T-2. John McCarthy, Marc Cantin, Daniel Erlich – 3

Top 3 Point Getters
1. Dean Strong – 5
T-2. Marc Cantin, Daniel Elrich – 4

Top 3 PPG
1. Nicholas Petrecki – 2.00
2. Dean Strong – 1.67
T-3. Marc Cantin, Daniel Elrich – 1.33

Top 3 PIMs
1. Rigby Burgart – 21
2. Frasier McLaren – 19
3. Philip Varone – 10

The Sharks outshot the Ducks by a margin of 102-74, and outshot the Ducks in all three games. In Game 2, the Sharks exceed a 2:1 shot ratio, getting off 39 shots in comparison to the Ducks’ 17. The Sharks collectively scored on 10.78% of their shots, while the Ducks scored on 4.05%. The shutout Stalock posted probably helped the Sharks in this regard.

In regards to special teams, the Sharks were on the power play 18 times in comparison to the Ducks’ 16 times. The Sharks scored 3 power play goals for a rate of 16.67%. The Ducks scored just one PPG, making the Sharks’s kill rate 93.75%. The power play hurt the Sharks in Game 1, going 0-for-7, but then they rebounded in Game 2 and went 2-for-9. The only PPG the Sharks gave up was in Game 1.

A breakdown of the penalties the Sharks took:
11 “fisticuffs,” 6 tripping, 4 roughing, 3 hooking, 2 slashing, 2 instigator, 1 high-sticking, 1 boarding, 1 interference, 1 cross-checking, and 1 partridge in a pear tree.

While stats don’t tell the whole story (top prospect Logan Couture did not score, but from all accounts he was one of the best players on the ice in the two games he played), it is quite interesting to see what they do say. Like, the fact that Dean Strong, Marc Cantin, and Daniel Elrich were the top point-getters for the tournament. Who would have expected that? I know I wouldn’t have, since I didn’t know who any of those guys were before Sunday.

Boxscores from Game 1, Game 2, and Game 3.