Speed of Golden Knights and what seven-goal loss tells us about the Sharks

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The shellshock of San Jose’s 0-7 near-victory over Vegas Thursday night still vibrates a bit for most Sharks fans. Their team was right in the game until it began, and got right back in it as soon as it ended.
 
The stuff inbetween . . . well, there was education in that part, and the thing that stood out most was that speed-wise, Vegas is to San Jose as San Jose was to Anaheim.
 
But the second thing is that this is the third seven-goal margin of the 2018 playoffs, the first time that has happened since 1983, in the middle of the NHL’s Basketball Scores era. That, too, is what speed will get you – routs.
 
Now add the fact that San Jose has been involved in three of those five games – last year beating Edmonton, 7-0, in Game 4 and then losing the rest of the series, and then two games ago beating Anaheim, 8-1 in Game 3 of a series that ended in four. This would seem make Peter DeBoer the new Mike D’Antoni.
 
In other words, this could very well happen again. Either way.
 
This seems like your classic nitwit-based hot take, given that seven-goal wins (or losses, if you must) have happened only 47 times in more than 4,200 games, a hit rate of barely one percent.
 
But playoff hockey, typically so much less freeform, is undergoing a slow but noteworthy change. Scoring is considered good, and even the seven-goal win, historically a 100-1 shot in the postseason, is hitting at 25-1 the past two years.
 
The bad news for San Jose? When you lose by seven, it is a pretty accurate predictor about when golf begins. In the previous 46 series with a touchdown spread or more, the team that won said game won the series 37 times, including 17 of the last 20 times, and won the next game 33 times, including 15 of the last 20.
 
In other words, in the unsettled world of playoff hockey, where momentum only exists within games but not between them, a seven-goal game typically means you are a hell of a lot better than the team you just beat, and turning around such a trend may take more strength than the Sharks have.
 
And “better teams tend to win by larger margins” is not such a hot take at all. But it is what San Jose has to cling to going into Saturday’s Game 2. Until then, there is only the Vegas Flu and the Golden Knights, and will remain so until further notice.

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