Which former Sharks team does the current team (April '16) remind you of?

[polmaniac932]

I'm gonna go '05-'06 Sharks:

Ekman—Thornton—Cheechoo
Michalek—Marleau—Bernier
S. Thornton—Goc—Stevenson
Nieminen—Smith—Rissmiller


Ehrhoff—Preissing
Gorges—Hannan
Mclaren—Carle

Obviously, Cheechoo stood out as having an unprecedented year, but this team had a dominant top line with pretty good depth overall, a decent defensive core, and not the greatest penalty kill. Keeps coming to mind with what's going on this year.

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[LadyStanley]

None of the above.

(Insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results)


Some of the faces may be similar, but this team is very different than any other.

 

[superpie]

You guys might think im crazy but I think the Sharks feel like the 06-07 Buffalo Sabres. The Sharks have a little bit more top heavy talent while the 06-07 Sabres had slightly better overall depth.

Briere and Drury --> Thornton and Couture
Vanek --> Pavelski
Connolly- Marleau
Campbell --> Burns
Miller --> Jones

Multitude of 20 goal scorers and good overall depth. The Sharks aren't as offensively talented as this team but they are a better overall team.

 

[OrrNumber4]

I'm gonna go '05-'06 Sharks:

Ekman—Thornton—Cheechoo
Michalek—Marleau—Bernier
S. Thornton—Goc—Stevenson
Nieminen—Smith—Rissmiller


Ehrhoff—Preissing
Gorges—Hannan
Mclaren—Carle

Obviously, Cheechoo stood out as having an unprecedented year, but this team had a dominant top line with pretty good depth overall, a decent defensive core, and not the greatest penalty kill. Keeps coming to mind with what's going on this year.

Really difficult to compare...with the rising cap, teams are able to deeper than they were in 2006. The defense today is better, even contextualized. Gorges was near-trash, Ehrhoff and Carle were good (certainly superior to DeMelo/Mueller/Tennyson by a good bit) but very inexperienced. That supremely raw group got clobbered in the playoffs. I think the Sharks missed McCauley in the playoffs...

Also, don't forget that the Sharks had the questionable Toskala in net. Ironic that it was his selfish decision to hide his injury that probably vaulted Nabokov over him in 2007. For sure, Toskala looked strong in the RS and Jones could certainly go that route, but it was very unlikely then and just as unlikely now.

 

[DonskoiDonscored]

None really.

Granted I didn't watch the 90's in person but this team is like a whole new beast.

 

[AgentCooper]

Really difficult to compare...with the rising cap, teams are able to deeper than they were in 2006. The defense today is better, even contextualized. Gorges was near-trash, Ehrhoff and Carle were good (certainly superior to DeMelo/Mueller/Tennyson by a good bit) but very inexperienced. That supremely raw group got clobbered in the playoffs. I think the Sharks missed McCauley in the playoffs...

Also, don't forget that the Sharks had the questionable Toskala in net. Ironic that it was his selfish decision to hide his injury that probably vaulted Nabokov over him in 2007. For sure, Toskala looked strong in the RS and Jones could certainly go that route, but it was very unlikely then and just as unlikely now.

You've said this before, but it seems awfully hard to prove. It seems to me that players just get payed more to do the same work.

 

[Led Zappa]

You've said this before, but it seems awfully hard to prove. It seems to me that players just get payed more to do the same work.

Teams like the Sharks and specifically the Sharks never spent like teams such as Detroit. That allowed a team like Detroit to be significantly "deeper" than teams like the Sharks IMO.

Teams like Detroit and Chicago can attract better talent and thus are better able to field consistently better teams than smaller market teams, but the gap is not as great. The parity in the league seems to support this opinion.

 

[OrrNumber4]

You've said this before, but it seems awfully hard to prove. It seems to me that players just get payed more to do the same work.

Well, it has to do with the proportionality of rising resources. In general, the top players will get paid, regardless. As the cap goes up, less of the increase will go to the top players (as a %). For example, when the cap was 39 million, the top players in the league had hits between 6.0 and 7.8(the max) million; the top-20 contracts in the league averaged about 7 million; the top-50 about 5.5 million. Today, the top players have cap hits between 7-11 million...the top-20 contracts average about 8.5 million; the top-50 about 7 million.

As a percentage of the cap, you go from ~10-12% to ~15-18%. That is an extra ~4 million that teams have to spend on depth. That's an extra top-6 forward, a #3 defenseman, or two bottom-pairing guys.

Not to mention the other factors. For example, rookie contracts and league-minimum contracts are nearly half as cheap with the higher cap in place.