Let sleeping sharks lie: San Jose's playoff hopes are drying up faster than a beached whalehowing how costly holdouts can be

Sporting News, The, Feb 24, 2003 by Brian A. Shactman

Understand this: Sharks general manager Dean Lombardi is no different from most of his 29 colleagues. Hockey is his raison d'etre. And winning the Stanley Cup would be the piece de resistance. It's that simple.

That's why he finds himself driving through Ohio in midwinter, scouting players who could someday help his team. That's why, despite spending years in the game and hundreds of hours at the rink, during games he still feels like a first-time father in the hospital waiting room, talking to anyone about the philosophy of how to raise a team to be a winner in the harsh NHL world.

But unlike the general managers running playoff-competitive teams, these days a few unprintable French curses might be on the tip of Lombardi's tongue.

"It's funny. I remember telling (Flyers G.M.) Bobby Clarke one of my first years as G.M. that I wished we had a team like his, a respectable team," Lombardi says. "He told me it's easier to go from a bad team to a respectable one than it is to go from respectable to a champion.

"I now can see what he was saying."

You see, the Sharks have spent the good part of seven years improving, inching toward elite status in the NHL, but suddenly, after two key preseason holdouts and a slow start, Lombardi finds his team inching toward mediocrity--and postseason exclusion.

Last season, the Sharks made a strong move toward being a champion, winning the Pacific Division, the most competitive in the Western Conference, with 99 points. Their playoff hopes came to an end in a loss in seven grueling games against the defending champion Avalanche in the conference semifinals. Then, Teemu Selanne resigned in the offseason, accepting less than he could have earned on the open market. The team's core, except for Gary Surer, who retired, was returning, which turned the Sharks into a preseason Stanley Cup favorite.

Suddenly, it's well past the midpoint of the season and the Sharks are outside the playoff picture, on pace for 20 to 25 fewer points than last season. What happened?

Good question.

Begin with the contract holdouts of two young stars: goalie Evgeni Nabokov and defenseman Brad Stuart. Both missed training camp and several games for what amounts to relatively small salary increases. The Sharks opened the season 5-9-1-2, and in the hypercompetitive West, that's like starting a 100-yard dash 10 yards back. An NHL season is 82 games long, but 10 points might be more difficult to make up in the West than those 10 yards, like Fat Albert trying to catch a juiced-up Ben Johnson.

Lombardi says he did his due diligence on the holdouts and called the process "agonizing" after building the team up. He adds that he and his staff have addressed whether they could have done anything differently. He admires the Stars and the Canucks for signing A list players and avoiding potential holdouts.

"What we could have been is more proactive," Lombardi says.

He adds that the holdouts were a factor, but not the only one, behind the Sharks' woes. "You're kidding yourself if you don't think it affects you," he says, "but it isn't the sole reason we started the way we did. It can't be.

"Other teams have been missing guys. Look at (Chris) Pronger in St. Louis or Colorado not having (Peter) Forsberg last year. Were we as good as we could have been? No."

Lombardi is right. Stuart and Nabokov are good, but not the equivalent of losing Ray Bourque and Patrick Roy. And Lombardi's actions since October are consistent with the notion that the holdouts haven't been the only problem. He fired coach Darryl Sutter and traded for defenseman Kyle McLaren in a three-team deal, giving his team three key players who missed training camp and regular season games.

Nabokov and Stuart don't want to talk about how their holdouts affected the team. The Sharks own their rights for a few more years, and any mis-spoken words could be a problem in the next negotiations. Players do separate the game from the business, but there's also likely guilt involved, and more attention drawn to the holdouts doesn't give the team more wins or more points.

"Let's just say we've talked it out, and it does no good to talk about the first month of the season," Sharks winger Scott Thornton says. "The guys have been back long enough, and we've stumbled a lot with them back.

"We're all trying to figure out how to improve individually and help the team."

The players are not using the holdouts as excuses, but part of Lombardi wonders whether the risk was worth the reward. Lombardi has a budget he must follow, and it was his priority to keep the core of his team together. Paying higher salaries than his budget allowed would have meant cutting loose players to make room.

"Looking back, would it have been worth sacrificing a role player to be in a better position?" he says. "That is the question I still struggle with."

As the team struggles in the standings, other general managers are sympathetic to Lombardi's plight.

"I fully support San Jose's decision" Canucks G.M. Brian Burke says. "Does it have an adverse impact on the team? Sure. Does it kill a team's chance to make the playoffs? It doesn't have to.