Anyone who knows just a little bit about Marc-Edouard Vlasic off the ice is aware of how much he loves his three dogs. On his way home from SAP Center late after a game, good performance or not, there’s only one thing on his mind.
“The only thing I’m thinking about when I go home is, ‘I can’t wait to see my dogs,’” Vlasic said Saturday morning.
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Obviously, Vlasic said that with a smirk on his face. The longtime Sharks defenseman has never preferred to dive too deep in interviews when asked about his own game, which, as it so happens, has been trending up lately.
That includes Saturday’s Sharks win over the Nashville Predators: 2-1 in a shootout. For the third game in the last five, Vlasic got on the scoresheet, registering an assist on Tomas Hertl’s game-tying goal in the third period. Vlasic shot the puck from the point; it was redirected by Timo Meier, and Hertl was there to bang home the rebound off goalie Juuse Saros.
But there were the other, more subtle plays, too. In the second period, Vlasic stepped up in the neutral zone and pushed an attempted Predators pass back the other way. The result was a good look at the net by Melker Karlsson. Later in the frame, he picked off a Ryan Johansen attempted clear and got the puck down low to Evander Kane, leading to a prime scoring chance by Logan Couture.
After the assist on Hertl’s goal, Vlasic helped kill off a Kevin Labanc hooking minor midway through the third period, and then, with time running down in a 1-1 game, he pinned the puck in the corner in the final minute and stood his ground before Hertl helped him out and cleared the zone.
Nashville got another power play in overtime, and Vlasic stepped up again, clearing the front of the net on two occasions before Meier was the only player to convert in the skills competition in the seventh round to give the Sharks their third straight victory.
They were the kind of effort plays Vlasic simply didn’t seem willing to attempt throughout the first month. And his lackadaisical play prompted some questions.
Was Vlasic, who is owed $7 million for six more seasons after this one, on his way out of town? Canadiens assistant general manager Scott Mellanby recently scouted the Sharks on multiple occasions, and it’s not a stretch to think the Sharks might have been looking to move the Montréal native, especially considering Brenden Dillon and Radim Simek are pending unrestricted free agents. The Canadiens are thought to be in the market for a left-handed defenseman, while the Sharks could use some help up front.
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Or perhaps Vlasic was upset he didn’t get a letter. Despite Vlasic being the longest-tenured Sharks player, Couture was chosen as the captain. Hertl, Brent Burns, Joe Thornton and Erik Karlsson were selected as the alternates.
Vlasic denied that not getting a letter was disappointing.
“(I) lead by example on the ice,” he said. “You can say a lot of things, but if you don’t execute it, it’s meaningless. It’s about going out on the ice and showing and leading by example on the ice.
“Losing bothers me, and my dogs being sad bothers me. Other than that, nothing bothers me. I’m a simple guy.”
At the beginning of the Sharks’ homestand on Nov. 1, Vlasic had just one point, a goal, in 13 games, along with a -11 rating. In the last four games, he has one goal and two assists for three points and is a +5.
Maybe the dogs have noticed. But even if they haven’t, others have.
“I think he’s a little bit like our team. He had a little bit of a slow start, and he’s worked his way into the season and into his game,” coach Pete DeBoer said Saturday morning. “With him, when he’s assertive and moving his feet and jumping to check and jumping into the play, he’s one of the best in the world. Those are the kind of things we talk to him about.”
After the win over the Predators, Couture said: “He’s at his best. And I hate to say this, but when you don’t notice him, he makes the simple plays and the tough plays look very, very simple. When he’s playing well, he’s one of if not the best shutdown guys in the whole league. We’ve seen it here for enough years; we saw it last year in the playoffs and in that Colorado series what he did against that top line. He’s extremely good when he’s on it, for sure.”
The team benefits too, of course, and perhaps it’s no coincidence the group might finally be turning a corner now that Vlasic has noticeably improved. Saturday’s win over the Predators was, without question, their best 60-minute effort of the season, even if it did take a shootout to decide it.
All night, the Sharks went toe-to-toe with one of the better teams in the Western Conference. The Predators entered tied for the most goals per game in the league (4.00), but the Sharks held them to 19 shots on goal through three periods and only a handful of Grade A scoring chances.
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Wins earlier in the week against scuffling Chicago and Minnesota were not all that inspiring, as the Sharks nearly blew multiple-goal leads to both. Saturday’s win, though, suggested that maybe, just maybe, the Sharks (7-10-1) can get their act together.
“We needed to beat a good team like this,” DeBoer said. “We knew it would be a good test. We put together some good spurts of hockey here over the last week. I like some of the things we’ve been doing, but we haven’t been doing it enough — and we haven’t done it against a team like that yet this year. There’s a lot of good signs. Hopefully, we can turn the corner here.”
Hertl said: “It was the best game of the season against a really good team. Twenty players (and Martin Jones) was amazing, especially in the shootout. It was a really great effort, I thought we deserved the two points tonight.”
DeBoer also mentioned the Sharks didn’t have “any passengers” against the Predators, getting contributions from up and down the lineup. Jones, in particular, was very good, making 24 saves. He flashed the leather on Filip Forsberg with eight seconds to go in overtime and was forced to make seven more saves in the shootout.
But even on a night when every one of the Sharks could be proud of their effort, Vlasic’s game stood out. In fact, he finished with the best shot-attempt percentage of the evening (74.1 percent) despite facing Nashville’s top line of Johansen, Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson for much of it.
“He’s a quality player, and just like everybody else, we didn’t have the start that we wanted,” said Karlsson, who has been Vlasic’s partner for the last three games. “It’s finally starting to get back to (us) being the players that we’re supposed to be, the players that got us to the position we’re in right now. He’s one of them.”
— Reported from San Jose.
(Photo: Brandon Magnus / NHLI via Getty Images)