Ivory Coast = The San Jose Sharks

Joe Thornton, the Sharks' regular season greatness and playoff failure personified.

Didier Drogba, a truly larger than life figure in the Ivory Coast. He's an irritant on the pitch, but a great humanitarian off it.

Ivory Coast meets Silicon Valley in this pairing of valuable materials describing geographic features. Both are fairly recent additions to the top levels of their sports. Les Éléphants won their first and only major trophy at the 1992 African Cup of Nations, just as the Sharks completed their first NHL season. Since qualifying for their first ever World Cup in 2006, Ivory Coast has duplicated San Jose's pattern of having loads of elite talent, dominating the "regular season" (qualifying campaigns), and failing to win anything in major tournaments / the "playoffs." Some of this has been due to bad luck: the Ivorians were drawn into "Groups of Death" at both Germany 2006 (with Argentina and The Netherlands) and South Africa 2010 (with Brazil and Portugal), and played the latter with superstar Didier Drogba hobbled by an injury. Other poor tournament results, however, were plain old choke jobs, like losing the 2012 African Cup of Nations final on penalties to Zambia (a team that had never previously won anything and has never even qualified for a World Cup).

And, like the Sharks, the core players that have led Ivory Coast through their run of heartache are now beginning to age out of the squad. This year's tournament is believed to be the last hurrah for Les Éléphants' "golden generation." The aforementioned Drogba, who enjoyed a run as one of the world's top strikers at Chelsea from 2004 to 2012, is 36. Defensive stalwarts Didier Zokora and Kolo Touré are 33, while top midfielder Yaya Touré (If Jim Brown had been born in West Africa in the early 1980s, he'd have been Yaya Touré), the spring chicken of the bunch, is 31.

This "generation" has performed superbly for the best clubs in Europe and won most of the continent's biggest trophies, yet they've never been able to put it together with the national team. Can they finally put on a good showing at a tournament this year? At least they've finally managed to avoid the Group of Death. Group C is one of the weaker ones this year, featuring injury-plagued Colombia, offense-starved Greece, and defensively-challenged Japan. Will the Elephants stampede through this open door? Or has the fickle finger of fate waited just long enough to open said door for the players to be too old to take advantage?

P.S. You may hear the story during Ivory Coast's matches about how the team's success supposedly helped end the Ivorian civil war in 2005. Sadly, despite some positive contributions from Drogba and other players, this tale is far more myth than reality.