Peterson: Sharks have new offseason mission

SAN JOSE -- Four out of five Sharks players who dropped by the team's training facility Tuesday agreed: Stylistically speaking, their third consecutive two-rounds-and-overboard postseason was a departure from the first two.

On this point, there was consensus: The experience went down like a lard omelet, same as always.

"I have two conflicting emotions that don't normally go together," general manager Doug Wilson said. "One is pride, and one is disappointment."

The pride, he said, came from the way the team battled late in its first-round series to eliminate Calgary and the manner in which it fought back from a 3-0 deficit in the second round against Dallas. The disappointment is that spasms of self-destructive hockey made those comebacks necessary in the first place.

"When we were up against the wall, we played tremendous hockey," Wilson said. "Now we need to see more of it."

Thus, the mission heading into the offseason is slightly different from the past two years, when the Sharks, pushed up against a wall in the playoffs, applied their own blindfolds. Then the question was: Do they have it in them?

Now the question is: How do you get it out of them on a regular basis?

Good question.

"We played strong in the first series against Calgary," Joe Thornton said. "People had us down and out in that one. (The Dallas) series was just an incredible series. To get down 3-0, I don't know how that happened. But we battled back."

The Sharks won Games 4

and 5 and took the Stars to four overtimes before losing Game 6. On the morning of what would have been Game 7, they insisted that display of urgency and stick-to-it-iveness had put to rest long-standing questions about their intestinal mettle.

"This whole season answered that question," Patrick Marleau said.

"That criticism is all in the past," Thornton said. "We're a true hockey team now."

A fistful of loonies says you still can use those long-standing questions to start a first-rate bar fight anywhere in Canada. But let's give the lads the benefit of the doubt. Let's say they discovered that elusive playoff overdrive everyone keeps talking about, if not how to apply it evenly over the course of a game or a series.

In that case, the focus of the question changes. Because, and not to be redundant, they still lost in the second round. So the less that repetitive failure is an issue of intensity, the more it becomes an issue of ... talent?

"I think the nucleus of this team is extremely strong," Jeremy Roenick said.

"I'm very happy with this group," coach Ron Wilson said. "We're maturing. We could easily still be playing."

As long as we have the coach on the line, could it be coaching? Foxsports.com contributor Al Strachan wrote Monday that Ron Wilson is a goner, his "terse and sarcastic" demeanor having worn thin on his players.

(Disclaimer: The joke Tuesday was that Strachan was the writer who correctly predicted the Sharks' firing of Darryl Sutter. Of course, it didn't actually come to pass until the fourth time Strachan wrote it.)

"That's all irrelevant," Wilson said -- sorry, no getting around it -- tersely. "Look at my record. It's second to none. We've accomplished more since I've been here than any other team, aside from winning the Stanley Cup. That's next on our list to cross off."

If Sharks players are harboring a deep and bitter animosity toward their coach, they're doing a swell job of hiding it.

"Probably the most fun I've had playing for a coach," said Roenick, who has been in the league since Lady Byng was a debutante.

"I think Ron has done a great job," said Marleau, who has taken as much heat from his coach as any player in the room.

"He doesn't play a single shift out there," Thornton said. "It's up to us to produce."

Well, it has to be something. Because this year's playoff ouster, unlike the past two seasons, cannot be traced to a shortcoming from within. This was a failure from without.

Which is another way of saying these Sharks finished where they finished on merit. They are a top eight team. They are not a top four team. And unless you believe the answer lies in the bounce of the puck, the breaks of a game or simply the boys banging their heads against the glass ceiling until it shatters (not the way to bet), change is coming just as sure as summer follows spring.

"We're going to keep pushing until we get there," Doug Wilson said. "And we will get there."

Not necessarily the most inspiring rallying cry on record. Then again, "Wait til next year" was already taken.

Contact Gary Peterson at gpeterson@bayareanewsgroup.com.