Looking at the TV ratings, it's highly unlikely that, unless you're a diehard fan of the San Jose Sharks or St. Louis Blues, that you've been paying much attention to those teams' NHL Western Conference Final series.
But while you might not be watching the games, you should be rooting for Sharks center Joe Thornton.
Already one of the greatest players of the last two decades, Thornton is one win away from making the first Stanley Cup Final of his tremendous, but maligned, career at age 36.
It's funny to think back on it, but this time last year, the notion of the Sharks making their first Stanley Cup Final in franchise history with Thornton leading the way would have received a scoff. San Jose's window had closed and if Thornton was going to raise the Stanley Cup, he was going to have to do it wearing another teams' sweater.
The Sharks were contenders from the moment they acquired Thornton in the post-lockout season of 2006, a move that paired an organization that couldn't get over the hump in the postseason with a player who, at only 26, was perceived as a great regular-season performer who choked come playoff time.
For 10 years, the two prodigiously talented but perennially snakebitten entities weren't able to shake their fates. Thornton has posted a Hall of Fame career, and the Sharks -- captained by their soft-handed center -- made the playoffs nine straight years, often with high seeds and high expectations. But even with two Western Conference Final trips, they never came all that close to the Stanley Cup Final.
Thornton was the easy scapegoat: In the Sharks' two best playoff runs -- those semifinal appearances in 2010 and 2011 -- he finished with more penalty minutes than points and negative plus-minus ratings.
The Sharks slipped from the NHL's elite after that, with their Cup chances diminishing annually, typically via a collapsing performance in the playoffs for which Thornton, who often was the only Sharks player to do well, unfairly took the brunt of the blame. Even 3,000 miles away, he could never shake the rap he picked up in Boston.
The pressure started to show cracks in the wall. Before the 2014 season, Thornton was stripped of the team's captaincy, an issue that lingered in the Sharks locker room for more than a year.
San Jose didn't make the playoffs in 2015 and Thornton's name frequently came up in trade rumors over the summer. It was widely believed around the league that it time to move on in San Jose -- time to start a new era.
But Thornton didn't want to move, so he didn't, and the Sharks had little choice but to spin the wheel one more time with him at the center of it all.
All Thornton did was post his best season since 2010 (82 points on 63 assists) and perhaps his best playoff performance ever.
The consistent pressure that comes from being labeled as an underachiever appears to have washed away with the Sharks' impressive playoff run, too. Every playoff, Thornton has made passes that seem impossible and shown the ability to control the game with the puck on his stick, but this year is different -- this year he looks like he's having fun.
"Never has a guy worked so hard to make the game look so easy," Sharks coach Pete DeBoer likes to say about Thornton.
It's not a one-man show, though -- goalie Martin Jones, formerly Jonathan Quick's backup in Los Angeles, has come to the Sharks and provided much-needed solidity between the pipes; teams have no answer for two-way dynamo defenseman Brent Burns; Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture have both averaging more than a point per game his postseason.
But make no mistake, the operation still revolves around Jumbo Joe.
He had three points in the Sharks' Game 5 win Monday night, putting he and his team one step away from the Stanley Cup Final. Wednesday's Game 6 is the first of two chances to get over the hump that has grown annually for the last 18 years.
So while you might not want to watch an all-time great take one final go at immortality, it's certainly something that -- from a distance -- we can all root for.
