Joe Thornton Is Not to Blame for San Jose Sharks Playoff Loss

Joe Thornton has had quite a career. He's won awards and has captained two different teams.

He's played in almost 1000 games and has more than 1000 points scored in his career.

Yet, there is something that has always eluded him.

No matter his individual successes or regular season triumphs, Joe Thornton has always come up short in the playoffs.

It's earned him some rather unflattering nicknames. Names like "big game bust" or "choker" have been used when describing Thornton as playoff disappointment after playoff disappointment piled up.

This year, however, Jumbo Joe is not only not to blame for the Sharks falling to the Vancouver Canucks, he's one of the reasons that they made it deep into the playoffs as they did.

Thornton had 17 points in 18 playoff games this season, which is a postseason career high for him. His three goals are not exactly staggering, but the 14 assists that he tallied came in big moments.

Thornton is a power forward, but his game is much more about setting up his teammates, and he did that this postseason with incredible consistency.

Something else that he did this year that you don't really see in the stat sheet is really embrace the defensive portion of the game.

After defeating the Detroit Red Wings in Game 7, Thornton described himself as the "shut down center" for his team.  In past seasons, one could say that Thornton was pretty good on the offensive side, but never really brought the same kind of effort to his own zone.

The same can definitely not be said of him this year. Thornton played in every single zone with the same intensity and was able to play some of his best hockey in the neutral zone, creating turnovers and stifling his opponent's momentum.

Thornton also was a big face-off man. Any time there was a big face-off to be taken, Thornton was out there. 

The commentators on Versus were frequently surprised at how often he was able to win face-offs in big moments against the opponent's best player. 

There were points in the series against Detroit where Thronton won several in a row against Pavel Datsyuk, who is one of the best face-off men in the game.

He was also an amazing leader. He constantly said all of the right things to help inspire his team to step up and be leaders.

Thornton described the Shark's locker room as "a room full of leaders."  When the captain of your team says things like that, it makes everybody confident.

It almost has the same type of effect that Tony Dungy used to have in the NFL. Players said they played harder for him because they didn't want to disappoint him, not because they didn't want to get yelled at.

This type of example helps make a team more complete. If everybody becomes a leader, then everybody starts to play for each other, and you can look straight to your captain to create that type of energy.

In the end, Joe Thornton and the Sharks have fallen short of the Stanley Cup Finals yet again, and many people in San Jose and around the NHL are going to be trying to find some justification for this.

In past years, it would have been appropriate to lay blame on Thornton, but this season is quite the opposite. 

Joe Thornton was fantastic for the Sharks in this postseason, and should not be blamed for the Shark's loss.