San Jose Sharks: Martin Jones incredible turnaround has saved the team

After struggling during the regular season, goaltender Martin Jones is saving the San Jose Sharks.

When it was announced that the San Jose Sharks and the Vegas Golden Knights secured the first-round matchup of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, there wasn’t too much excitement. Aside from the buzz of the emerging rivalry between San Jose and the Vegas team entering its sophomore season, neither team had been playing at an exciting level to that point that would convince anyone to put either team far in their bracket.

The Golden Knights may have been the victim of high expectations. After all, it’s hard to live up off a Stanley Cup finals appearance in your first season. But the Sharks were a different story. Although they made the playoffs in the disappointing Western Conference, they hype that surrounded the team following the Erik Karlsson trade never seemed to fully arrive, in part due to Karlsson’s regular season injuries.

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Even worse, there was goaltender Martin Jones. Jones entered the playoffs having the worst season his career, with a goals-against average dangerously close to 3.0 (2.94 to be exact) and a save percentage of 0.896.

If you had told anyone in the hockey community he would end up leading his team to the conference finals, they would have told you that you were crazy. Then again, if you told anyone the Blue Jackets would sweep the Tampa Bay Lightning, or the New York Islanders would sweep the Pittsburgh Penguins they would have said you’re crazy as well. But these playoffs have been anything but predictable.

The interesting thing with Jones is that he didn’t make his dramatic turn around until well after the playoffs were underway. We’ve seen goalies find their game and make a name for themselves in the postseason, such as Cam Ward with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006 or Matt Murray with the Pittsburgh Penguins consecutive cup runs in 2016 and 2017.

But Jones didn’t reach his lowest until these playoffs were well underway and he was pulled in game four against Vegas. Vegas had built a 3-1 lead and the series looked over.

From that point on, Jones has been playing day and night with a dramatic turnaround. Kevin Woodley of NHL.com wrote a comparison of Jones, while detailing his resurgence, and his Western Conference finals opponent Jordan Binnington of the St. Louis Blues.

He attributes Jones change in play to him playing less of the role as an aggressor and spends more time deep in his crease. Look at the 2016 Stanley Cup Final, when Jones skating far out of his crease was a common sight, to now and the results are day and night.

Woodley continues to point out the deeper he stays in the crease, the more likely Jones is to fall victim to screened goals and deflections. Not to mention he continues to have problems stopping goals coming off the rush, where 54% of his regular season goals came as a result of. The league average in that category was 39.2%.

Ever since earning the starts spot back in game 5 of the first round series, Jones has only surrendered more than two goals twice. Both of those games also saw his save percentage dip below .900 once again, but only one was a loss. The loss came in Game 6 versus the Colorado Avalanche, but his other 4 goals allowed night was a win versus Vegas in the famously wild game seven of that series.

To say Jones is the reason for the Sharks deep playoff push wouldn’t give enough credit to the team around him. It’s easy to pick out his best performances that bailed San Jose out, such as his 58 save victory in a double-overtime Game 6 against Vegas.

Meanwhile, the Sharks are an offensively gifted team, having the second highest goals per game out of the remaining playoff teams  (the eliminated Golden Knights rank above them). Fellow Shark Logan Couture leads the league in playoff goals with nine and is joined by Brent Burns and Tomas Hertl in the NHL’s top five playoff scorers. Karlsson joins in the top ten at number eight, giving the Sharks more players in the top ten than any other playoff team.

Jones is only going to end up as good as the other goalie on the other end of the ice, which now is Jordan Binnington of the St. Louis Blues. Binnington has a smaller sample size, playing an abbreviated season as an NHL call up, but lacks one thing that Jones has all too well – experience.

The conference finals and deep playoff runs with their success and heartbreaks are nothing new to Martin Jones. Although Binnington has gone this far, each new round takes him into uncharted territory. Martin Jones has already been there and done that.

Then again, Binnington hasn’t exactly faced bargain bin goalies to get the Blues to the conference final. He faced former Vezina finalist Connor Hellebuyck during the first round Winnipeg Jets series and Ben Bishop was nothing short of outstanding with the Dallas Stars in their second-round matchup.

No matter how much Jones has improved his game, unless Lightning strikes San Jose twice he’ll be nowhere near as brilliant as Bishop was, even though Bishop was on the losing effort.

After defying the odds to get this far, San Jose won’t settle for anything less than the Stanley Cup. Jones could only take them oh so close in 2016 during his first season as a Shark. If they get knocked off by the Blues, news of Martin Jones’s improved game will provide little comfort to a fan base longing for its first championship.