Joe Thornton's Savvy Play Only Thing Keeping Sharks Alive vs. Penguins

File it under “what else was he going to say?” After the San Jose Sharks’ Game 3 victory in the Stanley Cup Final on Saturday evening, head coach Peter DeBoer expressed nonchalance about the lopsided shot totals between his club and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

TSN’s Frank Seravalli tweeted the comments:

Despite DeBoer’s professed indifference, it’s a very good bet that the coach is deeply concerned about the way the Pens have dominated the shot clock in the series.

That kind of puck-possession play has been a hallmark of the Sharks this season. They were tied with Pittsburgh for the league's fourth-best score-adjusted Fenwick rating (a measure of unblocked shots) during the regular season and were only a whisker out of second overall. In the playoffs, San Jose outperformed the Los Angeles Kings by the same metric after L.A. had led the league during the regular season.

Suffice to say the Sharks aren’t one of those teams that claim unbeatable goaltending or supernatural finishing ability. They tend to beat the opposition by spending more time in the offensive zone and putting more pucks on net than their opponents.

Against Pittsburgh, that’s a task that only Joe Thornton’s line has managed.

Thornton is probably best known for his playmaking abilities, and he made his first obvious contribution of the Cup Final in that regard in Game 3 with a pair of assists. He’s also long been an analytics darling, though, in large part because of the way the ice tilts when he’s on it.

It hasn’t been hard to see the effect of his presence through three games:

Game	w/ Thornton	Percentage	w/o Thornton	Percentage
Game 1	+11/-9	55.0%	+13/-27	32.5%
Game 2	+7/-4	63.6%	+13/-23	36.1%
Game 3	+8/-11	42.1%	+11/-30	26.8%
Totals	+26/-24	52.0%	+37/-80	31.6%

With Thornton on the ice, the Sharks have had a fighting chance, outshooting the Pens 26-24 and taking 52 percent of all shots. In two of the three games, San Jose has held an advantage on the shot clock during his playing time.

With Thornton on the bench, however, the Pens have routed San Jose in the shot department. The Penguins have dominated territorially in every game the moment Thornton’s line leaves the ice, and through three contests, Pittsburgh is managing more than two shots for every one the Sharks fire. That would be bad if everything else was equal, but with Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin taking those shots, everything else already favours the Pens.

This is a point worth making, because discussions about hockey teams have an ugly habit of being reduced to those teams’ best players. Kessel knows this better than most, having been the scapegoat for the Toronto Maple Leafs' failings prior to his arrival in Pittsburgh, but Thornton knows the feeling, too.

The former San Jose captain has taken an incredible amount of criticism over the years for his team’s consistent inability to win four rounds in the postseason. At one point, he even told David Pollak of the Mercury News that Sharks general manager Doug Wilson needed to "stop lying" and "shut his mouth." Wilson had claimed that the stress of the captaincy was getting to Thornton. 

Matt Kincaid/Getty Images

Whatever happens, it seems clear that criticism would be unwarranted given his line’s performance through three games of the Stanley Cup Final and in the three rounds prior. Thornton and his linemates, Joe Pavelski and Tomas Hertl, have been good throughout the playoffs, with San Jose outshooting the opposition 157-127 and outscoring it 15-8 when the big centre is on the ice.

Unfortunately for San Jose, the Sharks roster is top-heavy. There’s a big drop-off from the first line to the Logan Couture-centered second unit, and then a steeper one to the third and fourth lines. There’s a similar step-down effect from the Marc-Edouard Vlasic pairing to the Brent Burns tandem, and then again to the third pairing.

Keith Srakocic/Associated Press

Against most teams, that weakness at the bottom hasn’t mattered, but the Penguins aren’t most teams. Pittsburgh has an elite player on each of its three top lines, so no matter how carefully DeBoer deploys his units, somebody is going to be caught in an uneven matchup.

Despite a modest 2-1 lead in the series and a trio of one-goal games, the matchup between Pittsburgh and San Jose has not been as close as it seems. The Penguins have undeniably been the stronger team, entering the Sharks zone and keeping the puck there seemingly at will. Thornton’s line has been the only exception to the rule.

If San Jose hopes to win its first Stanley Cup, that trend cannot hold. Thornton’s line is doing all it can; the Sharks now need the rest of their forwards to follow his lead.  

Statistics courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com, NHL.com, Corsica, Natural Stat Trick and Puck On Net.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.