My New Years’ Resolution might be to stop talking so much about how Micheal Haley is bad at hockey. Or, like most NYRs I may just ignore it. But Colin and Ben cover a bunch of disparate topics this week — not just how much does Micheal Haley not bring to the Sharks. For example: Who has been great among the Sharks in the season so far? Why doesn’t Daniel O’Regan get to play on the Sharks’ 4th line? What do the Sharks’ recent decisions vis-a-vis Ward, Schlemko, Wingels et al. mean? Also, we talk about a team that sits atop the Pacific and has won 8 of 9, so that’s fun, even if only two of those wins were this week.

Colin joins me this week to talk to about the strange play decisions that the San Jose Sharks made this week (sitting Joel Ward and David Schlemko without there being a clear injury to blame). Are they trying to feature guys for a trade? Resting old people (sorry, Joel)? Just hooked on #timotime? Who knows! But the Sharks played well and took two of three, so who are we to complain? All this and more in this week’s podcast!

The San Jose Sharks forward depth has been tested due to injuries all season long, with Kevin Labanc and Danny O’Regan getting NHL minutes (at least temporarily, in O’Regan’s case). With DeBoer’s decision to start ‘coaching’ this week (i.e. sending guys to the press box for bad luck or whatever), it has, at long last, been declared Time Time in San Jose. As pay back, Timo even scored a goal while having an all-around pretty nice game to boot. This wasn’t the Sharks best or most consistent week, and yet it led to the longest win streak of the season and a pretty dominant period or two of hockey mixed in. Also, Kevin Labanc’s superior shoot out shuffle. Wow. Here’s hoping for both consistent play AND wins this coming week.

Apparently the answer to our podcast title is ‘no’, because the Sharks couldn’t manage to get that decisive goal this week. Two ugly losses and then a second half of back-to-back with travel on the horizon left Alex and I in a worse mood than Doug Wilson in Anaheim tonight. So we finally decide to rip into the handling of Mikkel Boedker and grouse about the schedule makers this week. We also wonder if #TimoTime is near (probably not as near as the org wants people to think).

Still, everyone needs to remember this is a team in playoff position missing one of it’s best scorers and a very good defenseman. The sun will probably come out tomorrow.

Yeah, it’s hyperbolic since we’re only 25 games into the season, but the 2016/2017 San Jose Sharks kinda looks like the best defense and goalie combo in the NHL at this juncture. And, it’s a bit suspicious to Colin and I that we’ve gotten to this point and also can’t buy a goal. Put those things together and it would appear that Peter DeBoer has turned our team into the 2014 Stanley Cup Champions. And I’m not sure that’s even a bad thing. We talk about that, the on-going injury bug, the organization’s forward depth, Brent $%*^ing Burns and more on this week’s podcast.