Shuttin' 'Em Down

I tuned in to the game between San Jose and Vancouver last night at just about the midpoint of the second period. (I have been reading Dave King's memoir of his year coaching Metallurg of Magnitogorsk in the Russian Super League, entitled King of Russia...I was in one of those reading grooves and wanted to push through to the end. It was good...maybe in the future I'll provide a review in this space.) By this time the Sharks had built a 5-0 lead, which I was pleased to see. What I was less pleased to see was the way in which the Canucks controlled the play for the remainder of the second period and indeed the game.

The game ended 5-0 because the two best players on the ice last night were Evgeni Nabokov and Vancouver goalie Curtis Sanford, who relieved starter Cory Schneider after the Sharks scored their fifth. I felt very good about Nabokov's performance--he made some tough saves and always looked in total control of his net. His focus was still exceptionally sharp, even though his team had a huge lead.

Combined with his seventeen third-period saves against the Rangers on Saturday, instrumental in preserving that 3-2 win, it's been a great couple of bounce-back games for Nabokov after looking dreadful in the high-profile 6-0 loss to Detroit last week. Like those of defensive backs in scrimmage football, the mistakes of goalies are obvious on the scoresheet and critical to the outcome of games. There is nothing that can send a team into a lengthy slide quite like a stretch of poor play from its top goaltender. Since every goalie has the occasional three-sigma-bad game that just doesn't go his way, the ability to get right back on the horse is crucial. Nabby has done that, and he looked in top form last night; that's why he's one of the best in the world.

Ugh

Ugh. Just...ugh.

The outcome of the big Sharks-Wings tilt in Detroit tonight? Wings 6, Sharks 0.

Hopefully we can leave all the excessive and factually misleading* gushing about the Sharks' "historic" start behind us, now.

The Sharks played reasonably well for the first ten minutes tonight. Then Evgeni Nabokov gave up a couple of featherbed-soft goals and they folded like Superman on laundry day.

Best case? This is a wake-up call that serves to remind the Sharks that however many points they have, they are not the league's best team.


* The Sharks only set a record for total points through thirty games because there are ways of getting points now that didn't exist several years ago. If all of their overtime/shootout wins were counted as ties (as they would've been in the past) their record would be more modest.

More Than Atmosphere

You hear it all the time, when two rival teams who are playing well collide during the regular season..."playoff atmosphere". Usually a term used to describe the feel, the buzz, surrounding the game--and the potential for the teams to meet in the postseason--the characterization often cannot be extended to the play itself.

However, Thursday's game between San Jose and Anaheim--which the Sharks won 2-0--transpired much as a playoff game would transpire. It was a tight, nasty, very competitive game from start to finish, with the Ducks effectively preventing the Sharks from engaging in the type of free-flowing hockey that San Jose has used to such good effect so far this season. Evgeni Nabokov played exceptionally well; his counterpart in the Anaheim net, Jonas Hiller, played okay, too, although he maybe let in one soft one. The dislike between the two teams, which has existed for years and been amplified in recent seasons when both clubs have been amongst the league's elite, was palpable from the start and only grew as the game went along, punctuated by a good fight between George Parros and Jody Shelley (winner: Shelley) and finally coming to a head in a scrum in the last minute that saw dozens of penalty minutes handed out. Even though the teams don't meet again until March, a dark cloud of unfinished business hung in the Tank as the players skated off.

As a Sharks fan, I found this to be the most satisfying win of the year so far. The Sharks will meet teams during the regular season against which they can impose their superior offensive talent and fire forty or fifty shots, and that's outstanding, but the playoffs ain't going to be like that. Playoff hockey is a tight-checking, very physical affair, and Thursday's game was a great dress-rehearsal for April. It was very encouraging to see the Sharks play full-bore for sixty minutes of tough, often ugly, always physical hockey, and very encouraging to see them bite back when the bullying Ducks (much like the Flyers teams of the '70s, dirty cheating has served Anaheim well) attempted to push them around. (Although there's a very fine line between refusing to be bullied and falling into the trap of playing the other team's game and finding oneself constantly shorthanded).

The Sharks were a difficult and no doubt unpleasant team to play against on Thursday night, and that's a good thing. Much like baseball, in which the reptilian fear of getting hit by a pitched ball is fundamental to the way in which the pitcher-batter duel plays out, and is therefore fundamental to the sport, you want teams that step on the ice against you to feel a lurking dread and to be acutely aware that there is nowhere to hide. (Teams obliged to play the Flyers when they were winning Stanley Cups were frequently afflicted by "the Philly Flu".) For all of their talent in the past several seasons, one has rarely had the impression that the Sharks inspired much fear in their opponents. Perhaps that is changing...and a welcome change it would be.