San Jose Sharks center Logan Couture, center, celebrates after scoring a goal with Patrick Marleau (12) and Joe Pavelski (8) during the third period in Game 6 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Western Conference finals against the St. Louis Blues in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday, May 25, 2016. Couture thinks the San Jose Sharks have seen just about everything, good or bad, that could happen to a hockey team. He may be right. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ AP- Jeff Chiu

PITTSBURGH - Logan Couture thinks the San Jose Sharks have seen just about everything, good or bad, that could happen to a hockey team.

He may be right.

Captains stripped of their letters, coaches fired, trade rumours. And worst of all, years of post-season failure.

The Sharks have had their good, including 10 straight playoff berths at one point, but most of their recent history aligns with drama and disappointment. Until now, that is, with San Jose reaching their first Stanley Cup Final in franchise history.

Finally, the club that failed to make the big leap for so long is four wins from championship glory.

"I think we've grown from a lot of the adversity we've gone through as a group," said Couture, who's leading the playoffs in scoring. "The guys that have been around here for a while, I think we've seen almost everything you can see in a hockey team."

"I think it just made us closer as a group."

The Sharks came oh so close to reaching the Cup Final before, only to fall short in the Western Conference final in back-to-back post-seasons.

Despair persisted with a first round loss to St. Louis in 2012, followed by consecutive seven-game defeats to the Los Angeles Kings in 2013 and 2014. The latter saw the Sharks race out to a 3-0 series lead, only to melt down, outscored 18-5 by their California foe over four straight heart-breaking losses.

Joe Pavelski, who filled a vacant Sharks captaincy at the beginning of the season, believes the group has responded to such situations better this time around. Take the first round against the Kings this spring: San Jose won the first two games, lost the third in overtime and then promptly answered with two victories to seal the series.

The Sharks also thumped Nashville 5-0 in Game 7 of their second round series.

"I just think we've handled certain situations well, whether it's been elimination games this year or getting off to good starts or just staying calm when things aren't always going the way we want them to," Pavelski said.

Roman Polak, among those added to the roster at the trade deadline, wonders if the Sharks of old were just blocked mentally from getting over that last hurdle.

"I think it's maybe just a mental thing," said Polak. "I don't think it's anything else. Maybe confidence a little bit too. You can see around the team (now) that there's a lot of confidence in the room."

Changes were made after the Sharks' 2014 unravelling. Joe Thornton was stripped of the captaincy that summer after replacing Patrick Marleau, who also had his captain's duties taken away.

San Jose went a year without a captain and missed the playoffs entirely in 2014-15, the low point of years of frustration.

If not entirely deterred, Sharks general manager Doug Wilson opted to change course slightly.

Pete DeBoer replaced Todd McLellan behind the bench, Martin Jones was traded for and then signed to stabilize the crease, while playoff veterans Joel Ward, Paul Martin and Joonas Donskoi were added via free agency. But the Sharks didn't alter their core, namely Thornton, Pavelski or Marleau. Wilson believed those players could still be "dominant" and opted to see how the cards fell.

"We did feel that we had a very good team and that's why we stayed on the course," Wilson said.

It was the brilliance of Thornton (63 assists), Pavelski (37 goals), Jones (.922 save percentage after the all-star break), as well as Brent Burns (75 points) and Couture that drove the Sharks back to the post-season. DeBoer's influence and a first-rate power play that's continued to flourish this spring helped too.

DeBoer thinks the team hit its stride in the second half. From Jan. 1 onward the Sharks were among the very best teams in the league, both in points and puck possession.

Wilson, the team's GM since 2003, started noticing changes even before that, notably in his team's response to trouble. He pointed to a six-game road trip at the end of November, one that saw the Sharks win the first five games before going down 3-1 in Columbus on the last day of the swing. The club rallied with four straight goals for a sixth straight victory.

Wilson got that feeling again in Game 5 of the Western Conference Final when the Sharks scored four straight in a 6-3 win over St. Louis.

"I think every round, every time you beat a great team, that confidence grows," said DeBoer, who coached the New Jersey Devils to the Stanley Cup Final in 2012. "The confidence in the game-plan and what we're doing and what our good games look like and how to repeat them."

"It's nice to get here, but we still realize we've still got to win this," Couture added. "We've still got to win four more games or else it really doesn't mean that much."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2016