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BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published April 2, 2009

As March Madness winds down, a new (and in my opinion, much more exciting) madness will take its place: the Stanley Cup. With only six games left in the regular season, the race for playoff positions and jockeying for home ice has reached its peak.

The brackets are coming out; teams are resting their starters and already lying about the extent of players’ injuries to avoid looking weak.

Along with these precious playoff essentials come the memories of the San Jose Sharks’ past playoff records, a thought I would as soon forget.

The Sharks have been a dominant team in the West for years and have won the Pacific Division title on several occasions, including this year.

Yet, much to their fans’ dismay, they have never reached the Stanley Cup finals.

In fact, in the history of the franchise, they have only made it to the Western Conference Finals once.
In the past two years, even when many had the Sharks picked to win it all, the team has embarrassingly exited the postseason in the second round, perfectly described by columnist Jim Adams as the “Stanley Cup Playoff Fizzle.”

With the critiques by so many announcers and sports fans of the Sharks playoff record and the dominance of the Sharks in the regular season, one has to question altogether the importance of a good playoff performance and whether the common beliefs of w
hat must be done to win a Stanley Cup are true.
Many announcers hail the playoffs as the ultimate competition, arguing that the best hockey of the season is played from April to June (yes, hockey playoffs take that long).

Yet a study published in the Journal of Sport Behavior in 1996 of professional basketball players showed that on average, players in playoff competitions exhibited significant decreases in productivity as compared to the regular season, directly contradicting the belief that the level of play is higher in the postseason.

Possible explanations for this include a correlation between the heat of competition or importance of a game with the anxiety levels of players or that the sheer number and frequency of games in the postseason lead to increased exhaustion and injury.

As sports psychologist Wayne Halliwell explained in Athletic Insight, a journal of sport psychology, the playoffs have a unique demand on professional hockey players.

The sheer length and intensity level of games, combined with the increased travel across multiple time zones in short periods of time, are bound to take an extensive psychological and physical toll on players that can negatively affect their level of play.

Yet hockey analysts and fans still insist that playoff performance is the only true measure of a team’s success.

With the physical demands the same for all teams, the playoffs become as much a competition of mental toughness as of skating ability.

This fact has not escaped the notice of general managers and coaches, who have had sports psychologists work with their teams in order to prepare for the psychological aspect of the postseason.

But what coaches still seem to rely on most is their veteran players keeping a cool head under pressure and helping the younger players who might never have participated in such fierce competition.

However, the previously discussed study of professional basketball performances in playoffs showed that veterans and rookies actually showed the same patterns in changes to
performances between the regular season and playoffs.

This might just be a testament to the ability of these veteran players to counsel the newer team members, but more likely, it is evidence that at the professional level, game pressure affects all players similarly.

The Sharks veteran who has been the biggest scapegoat of this misconception has been Joe Thornton, the team’s assistant captain and one of the best (if not the best) in the West.

Thornton has demonstrated his importance to the team again and again by consistently being one of the league’s point leaders, including contributing 23 points in the past 23 games, and by proving to be one of the best set-up men in NHL history.

Yet he has been critiqued as “going soft” in the playoffs and not delivering the big plays when they are needed the most.

These critiques seem especially misplaced considering how Thornton has been playing in the last few games.

In the Chicago game this past week, Thornton was pivotal in changing the team’s momentum to allow a recovery from a 1-4 deficit.

He scored the tying goal with two minutes left, with what appeared to be sheer will power, to push the game to overtime and allow the Sharks to recover their lead over Detroit in the Western standings.

If this is any indicator of what is to come, I’m sure this year’s playoffs will disprove all those who doubted the Sharks’ dominance because of past postseasons.

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