THN Archive: The All-New Vinny Joe Show

This week's latest San Jose Sharks Archive story discusses Joe Thornton and Vincent Lecavalier.

Thornton waited a long time to get his chance at a Stanley Cup Final appearance. He and former Tampa Bay Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier became the new generation of big centers.

Here is a look at this fantastic story from 2011:

THE ALL-NEW VINNY+JOE SHOW

May 30, 2011, VOL. 64, Issue 25

By Ken Campbell

DETROIT THIS SHOULD BE A GOOD DAY FOR JOE THORNTON. Really good. It’s an off day in Detroit and he’s not out to impress anybody and perhaps that’s why his hair looks like it belongs to a sixthgrader who rolled out of bed five minutes before the morning bell. He’s coming off an impressive, statement-making three-assist performance in a game that has put his San Jose Sharks on the brink of an appearance in the Western Conference final for the second consecutive year. More importantly, it’s the morning after the Washington Capitals have once again fallen on their post-season swords and Alex Ovechkin has officially assumed the title of NHL Superstar Who Can’t Get It Done in the Playoffs^TM.

Like Dickie Dunn in Slap Shot, we’re just trying to capture the spirit of the thing here. So we ask Thornton what he would say to Ovechkin if he were standing in front of him right now.

“Nothing, just ‘Hi’ I guess,” Thornton says, looking around as though he’s being Punk’d. “‘You’re a great player.’ I don’t know.”

It has taken 14 years, but the most easygoing guy in the NHL – part Spicoli, part Shaggy Doo – is finally starting to make it known that he has had his fill of questions about his past lack of success in the playoffs, his character, his leadership shortcomings and his ability to deliver a Stanley Cup. He certainly doesn’t buy the notion that he has reinvented himself, even if everyone around him does. Thornton says he has always been a sound defensive player, but the fact is his attention to detail in all 200 feet of the ice is unprecedented.

“He’s not offensive ‘Jumbo,’” says Sharks coach Todd McLellan of Thornton. “He’s complete ‘Jumbo’ now. We’re pretty excited about that.”

A few time zones and an opposite coast away, they’re pretty jacked up about the play of their captain, too. We’re just halfway through the playoff marathon, but to suggest that Thornton and Vinny Lecavalier of the Tampa Bay Lightning have evolved as early contenders for the Conn Smythe Trophy would not be a stretch. But after season upon season of eye-popping offensive numbers, we’re seeing a different breed of player materialize before our eyes. The fact is Thornton may never again score 100 points and Lecavalier might never even see the 30-goal mark, but in a strange way, both of them might now be better, more effective and more valuable players.

There are some interesting parallels between Thornton and Lecavalier, with the obvious distinction being the latter’s Cup win seven years ago, just after he turned 24. Both are big, strong men who possess a sublime level of offensive skill. Thornton was drafted first overall in 1997, Lecavalier in the same spot one year later. Both were selected by moribund teams that looked for them to be saviors. Both struggled through their first couple of seasons and had a team captaincy thrust upon them far too early in their careers. Lecavalier came within a hair of being traded before his prime years, while Thornton was dealt away at age 26. At times, Thornton and Lecavalier have looked like future Hall of Famers, at other times maddeningly ineffective. But now, as both of them make the turn past 30, they have redefined themselves into complete players who don’t show up on the scoresheet as often, unless you look at the fine print.

“We want a captain to inspire everybody because he’s blocking shots, because he’s winning faceoffs, because he’s backchecking better than the others, because he finishes his checks, because he is dedicated to defense when we’re leading rather than just trying to push the pace and cheat,” says Lightning coach Guy Boucher. “It’s easy to say it, but very rarely do these star players buy into it. But everybody can now see that we’ve got a captain that not only buys in, but he’ll bring in more than what we’re asking and that’s inspiring.”

McLELLAN CLAIMS THAT IF you placed a hidden camera in the San Jose Sharks dressing room, you’d see a much different side to Joe Thornton than the one he publicly portrays. If that camera had been on Thornton the morning of Jan. 14, it would have captured a player who was not very happy with his game or that of his team, with both in serious need of an epiphany.

That morning, the Sharks were in the throes of a six-game losing streak that had them in 12th place in the Western Conference standings. The last two losses in the streak had come on home ice to (gulp) the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs. Thornton was a combined minus-8 in the six losses.

During a players meeting that day, Thornton made it clear that if the Sharks were going to pull themselves out of their morass, they were going to have to be better defensively. He put himself at the top of that list, then went out and did something about his play without the puck and in his own zone. A 27-6-4 tear down the stretch followed, with Thornton contributing rather ordinary 10-21-31 totals in the season’s final 37 games.

But it was a crucial step in the evolution of both San Jose and Thornton. Because it was during that stretch the Sharks learned they didn’t have to rely on Thornton, Dany Heatley and Patrick Marleau to contribute all the offensive thrust. That left Thornton free to concentrate on sharpening his game in all three zones. The thinking was, Thornton was going to play against the top lines anyway, so if he could hold the opponent in check, the Sharks would have an enormous edge because their depth players are so much more talented than almost anyone else’s. The Sharks finished this season with seven 20-goal scorers and seven players with 50 points or more. The emergence of skaters such as Ryane Clowe, Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture as legitimate offensive threats took an enormous amount of pressure off Thornton.

And the plan worked. Anyone who doubts whether Thornton has changed his game should note he led the league in takeaways this season with 114. Some of that had to do with the fact Pavel Datsyuk was hurt for much of the year, but it was a lofty achievement nonetheless. But Thornton, who abjectly refuses to work with us on this transformation angle, has a convenient, if not misguided explanation for it.

“I think you go into some buildings and they’re pretty lenient on takeaways and you go into others and they’re not and I think San Jose might, you know, just be lenient on takeaways,” he says.

Yeah, that’s it. The guy in the NHL blazer at the HP Pavilion has nothing better to do than have an itchy trigger finger every time Thornton picks up a loose puck. And that theory also conveniently ignores the fact Thornton more than doubled the number of takeaways of his next most larcenous teammate, Pavelski, who had just 51. Takeaways are not the kind of statistic that are going to get you any year-end awards or big contracts, but for someone who has so often in the past been accused of being a periphery player, it’s a huge accomplishment. The same way giveaways are just as indicative of how much you handle the puck as how much you lose it, takeaways provide a clear indication of what you’re doing on the defensive side. And with puck possession being so important, it’s one of those attributes that doesn’t go unnoticed by coaches.

“You have to be around the puck,” McLellan said. “You have to be intelligent, you have to be hungry, you have to be in the play, you have to be working back because a lot of times those takeaways come when you’re tracking back. What it indicates to me is that he’s all over the ice.”

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by all of this. After all, it has been 14 years in the making. The evolution has been slow and painful at times, but with relative success the past couple years, Thornton has finally begun to shed his playoff demons. It has certainly been the case through the first two rounds this year. Going against the opposing teams’ top lines didn’t stop him from being tied with Clowe atop Sharks scoring. – Vinny

“He did a lot of these things in the past, but maybe they weren’t recognized because people were always looking to poke holes,” McLellan says. “I believe he’s bringing it more often and he’s doing it a little bit harder…playing harder and harder every day.”

SINCE SIGNING AN 11-YEAR contract extension worth $85 million, Vinny Lecavalier has scored 49 goals and 124 points, which would be a terrific season by anyone’s standards. The only problem for Lecavalier is, those numbers have been accumulated over the course of two NHL campaigns, during which he has been paid $10 million per season on a salary cap hit of $7.73 million until 2019-20. That works out to $161,290.32 in real dollars per point over the first two seasons of the deal.

A little unfair? Yes. To be sure, the Lightning didn’t envision Lecavalier becoming a 70-point player when they signed him to the deal. But they probably didn’t envision him becoming the complete player he has evolved into. Boucher’s 1-3-1 defensive system could prove to the be the bane of the game’s existence, but it has vaulted the Lightning from being playoff wallflower to playoff contender. And it has brought joy back into Lecavalier’s hockey life.

It certainly didn’t take long for Lecavalier to turn things around. He knew after speaking with Boucher this summer that things would be different in Tampa Bay. The thing almost every professional athlete wants, even the stars, is direction. And to say that was wanting in Tampa Bay the past couple of seasons would be an enormous understatement. Much has been made of the willingness of Lecavalier, Martin St-Louis and Steven Stamkos to “buy in to” what Boucher was selling in terms of a defensive system.

“When (Boucher) met with me I think he just brought back that confidence that was maybe lacking a little bit the past two or three years,” Lecavalier says. “He told me, ‘If you buy in as captain I think we’ll have a successful season.’ Now we’re doing it the right way.”

It didn’t hurt that all Lecavalier had to do for a template was look at his GM. Steve Yzerman went from “being a star to a winner,” in the words of Boucher, when Yzerman was with the Detroit Red Wings. In Scotty Bowman’s first season as Wings coach in 1993-94, Yzerman’s point per game average dropped 13 percent, then 43 percent the following year and he never hit the 100-point mark again. But to that point in Yzerman’s career, the same questions had dogged him as had followed Thornton around. But it was only after Yzerman committed himself to being a top defensive player did he lead the Red Wings to a Stanley Cup and cement his Hall of Fame credentials.

“You look at a guy like Pavel Datsyuk in Detroit,” Yzerman says. “He has never led the league in scoring, but he’s always in the conversation about who’s the best player in the league.”

Lecavalier reached his personal apex in 2006-07 when he won the Rocket Richard Trophy with 52 goals and posted a career-high 108 points. The years following were pockmarked by incompetent ownership, bad coaches and three seasons filled with injuries and poor play and constant rumors of trades. Under Bob Gainey, the Canadiens tried desperately to trade for Lecavalier in the summer of 2009 and settled instead for Scott Gomez. Things began to turn for Lecavalier when the team was bought by billionaire Jeff Vinik last season, but the real positive change came in the summer when both Yzerman and Boucher came on board.

“To tell you the truth, the last three years when you lose and you’re almost in last place, if not last place, you start wondering,” Lecavalier says, trying to explain his loss of aplomb. “I guess you do kind of question yourself and you start losing confidence.”

The first thing Boucher did was tell Lecavalier he wasn’t expected to score 50 goals and 100 points, but there was a caveat to that. In order to excel, Lecavalier would have to reinvent himself into the second coming of Yzerman, something Boucher said he was more than prepared to do.

“The mistake I as a coach didn’t want to make was to try to get him back to where he was before,” Boucher says. “Now it’s a different reality in the NHL and it’s a different reality for him. And it’s a different team.”

The culture change in Tampa Bay has been nothing short of remarkable, if not for the radical change in mindset, then the speed at which it was implemented. Until this season, the Lightning were offensive players were getting their points, but the team was near the bottom of the standings and going nowhere. Like Thornton, it has helped Lecavalier that other players have emerged as offensive stars for the Lightning, even though their depth of talent offensively is nowhere near what the Sharks’ is.

That’s primarily why everyone from the owner to the GM to the coach isn’t concerned that the organization is stroking very large paychecks for a player who may never again be a top NHL scorer.

“I’d rather have him scoring 30 and inspiring his team than scoring 50 and you get an offensive guy who’s not an example to anybody,” Boucher says. “If he can eventually score 50 and be a complete player everybody’s going to be happy, but right now that’s not at all the focus of what we wanted to do all year long.”

The hockey world has already seen solo greatness from both Thornton and Lecavalier. For Thornton, winning the Hart and Art Ross Trophies after being cast aside by the Bruins mid-season was one of the NHL’s all-time great individual performances. Winning a Cup and scoring 50 goals made Lecavalier a rich man. But you get the distinct impression that phase of their careers have passed for both players. The flash and offensive fireworks have been replaced by substance, the kind the NHL demands from players in leadership roles. It would have undoubtedly been interesting to see what Thornton and Lecavalier could have accomplished if they had continued to shoot the lights out through the course of their careers.

It’s not always the most compelling kind of hockey for a star who has spent most of his life being told how special he is to play the game. But in the end, the rewards are far more plentiful.

At least that’s what the Sharks and at the moment.