Obviously the D and goaltending are the silver lining, including the
penalty kill.
I had lost confidence in Nabby, partly because I didn't think he was
able to adjust to the "new" NHL. A big problem was that there seemed
to be an endless stream of penalties called, and with the move of the
blue line, teams had all sorts of time to pass back to the point and
shoot.
And the thing was, Nabby seemed lost on a number of the long distance
shots. He was dropping to his knees very early, and had apparently no
vision of the puck in a great number of cases.
I find this very interesting:
http://tinyurl.com/yrcj2x
At face value the stats back up the obvious: the Sharks have a great
PK this year. But the shot location and goal graph made me think about
how much better Nabby is at stopping the long shot. At first, I
noticed that he, like his Duck and Kings counterparts, was able to
stop the very longest shots, as most NHL goalies can.
I want to say that a couple years ago there would be a half dozen
goals from where out there already. It was really killing the Sharks
in some key games too, IIRC.
But not only that, after looking at it a second time, Nabby has let a
mere two shots from 30+'. He's really pulled it together, and the
Sharks are once again one heck of a kickass PK team.
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