FanHouse Joe Thornton

It's been a couple days since Dany Heatley was shipped from Ottawa to San Jose, so we've all had a little time to take a step back and look a the trade. Today, some of the best and brightest in the two blogospheres involved have taken the time to share their views on the trade with us. I have an odd feeling that the Senators' bloggers feel a lot of relief now that the trade has been mad but, to find out, follow me through the jump.

FanHouse's Adam Gretz takes a look at his top 50 players in the NHL. No. 9 is San Jose Sharks forward Joe Thornton.

Justified or not, Joe Thornton has become the poster child for postseason futility in the NHL, leading to the creation of TradeJoeThornton.com (be careful what you wish for).

In his 11-year career with Boston and San Jose, Thornton has yet to play beyond the second round of the playoffs, while his production hasn't quite matched his lofty regular season totals. Despite his perceived postseason struggles, he stills cracks my top-10 as one of the elite players in the NHL.

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Chris Snow, director of hockey operations for the Minnesota Wild, is entering his fourth season with the team after spending a number of years covering the Boston Red Sox for the Boston Globe, and the Wild for the Star Tribune. He joined the team's hockey operations department when its general manager at the time, Doug Risebrough, was looking for something different in the front office.

"Doug was a really accomplished player," said Snow. "He played for a while in the NHL, but he was also a guy that was a free-thinker and really looked outside the box. He had a need for someone in the front office to do a variety of work, but I also think he wanted to look at the position with growth in mind."

The recent SABR explosion in Major League Baseball has changed the way fans watch the game and evaluate the players taking part. Out are batting average and ERA; in are On-Base Percentage and WHIP. If you're a hockey fan looking for the same type of advancements, Behind The Net is a must-bookmark, as well as the folks at Puck Prospectus.

Hockey may be trailing baseball and the other major sports when it comes to advanced statistical analysis, but the gap is starting to close, and Gabriel Desjardins, lead man of Behind The Net and contributor to Puck Prospectus, is one of the people at the forefront.

The Detroit Red Wings are considered, in most circles, as the model franchise in the NHL. With four Stanley Cups in the past 14 years -- and six trips to the Finals -- it's hard to argue against that belief. Impossible, actually. But are they overrated when it comes to their success at the NHL Entry Draft?

On Monday, the great Maple Leafs blog, Pension Plan Puppets, unveiled an overwhelming analysis of every pick in the NHL draft from 1994 to the present created by one of their members. One of the surprising observations? The Detroit Red Wings are, according to his analysis, one of the worst teams in the NHL when it comes to the draft.

Blasphemy!

Hostilities began when the puck dropped, and in a penalty-happy Game 6, the Ducks took better advantage of the man advantage and knocked the top-seeded Sharks out of the playoffs.

San Jose, which finished with a league-best 117 points, fell 4-1 at the Honda Center and became the fourth President's Trophy winning team to fall in the first round. Perennial disappointments who have yet to make it to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Sharks do not have a good relationship with sixth games in playoff series, and are now 2-13 overall and 1-7 on the road in those games.

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Few teams inspire a lack of confidence like the Sharks. The Cubs, maybe. The Red Sox before 2004.

Even head coach Todd McLellan isn't immune. Asked about his team's flirtation with elimination after Game 4, he responded that he was "disappointed but not surprised." High marks for honesty, but that's a particularly stinging indictment coming from the team's coach.

Joe Thornton, the subject of weeklong criticism, came through in Game 5's win over the Ducks, and he will have to keep up that up tonight in Anaheim for San Jose to have any hope of forcing a Game 7 back home on Wednesday.

Can we even call this an upset at this point?

If you had been watching this series and not known which team was the Presidents' Trophy winner and which was the eighth seed, you would probably think the Ducks were the favorites in this series. They have dominated the play despite getting out shot in each game, a testament to goalie Jonas Hiller and the Ducks defense.

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One game into San Jose's playoff series with Anaheim, and already the Sharks are up against it.

That's what happens with a bull's-eye-producing President's Cup and a history of playoff flops, plus a prominent player or two who are gaining reputations for disappearing in April and May.

Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton combined for one shot in San Jose's Game 1 loss to the Ducks at the Shark Tank, and afterward, Thornton responded to questions about the small shot total by emphasizing that he's a passer, "if you haven't noticed," he said.

Exactly 1,230 regular season games have been played. We're down to the best eight teams in each conference. The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday night with four series lid-lifters.

The Western Conference is home to the league's best team (San Jose), the defending champion (Detroit), and the two most intriguing Cinderella stories in the league (St. Louis and Columbus). Can Cinderella put off the stroke of midnight, or will an established power advance their way to the Finals?