Thursday, May 19, 2011

Is it time to panic for the San Jose Sharks?

The San Jose Sharks were slaughtered by the President's Trophy winners, the Vancouver Canucks, in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals last night, and they now find themselves down 2-0 in the best-of-7 series.  As NHLNet's David Amber points out, no team has overcome a 2-0 series deficit since the 2005 lockout.  So, is it time for the Sharks to panic?  Today, I offer San Jose some advice.


  • They might want to take some advice from Philly, Chicago and Detroit by losing Game 3 and then winning out.  More teams have overcome 3-0 series deficits than 2-0 since the lockout.
  • When Patrick Marleau is gutless, the Sharks win, so Marleau has to stop checking, scoring and certainly stop fighting for San Jose to have success.
  • Somehow, the Sharks have awakened Vancouver's twin-giant, the Sedins.  Therefore, at least Ben Eager tried to shut a Sedin down by drilling him from behind last night.
  • Antti Niemi needs to remind the Canucks who he played for last season and which team beat them for the past two playoff seasons.
  • The Sharks need to stop playing Green Day on the team bus en route to Rogers Arena.
  • The Sharks have scored first in both games, which is good.  Their defensemen now need to stop imitating Jason Demers and actually clear pucks from the crease.
  • Todd McLellan also needs to remind his team that Kevin Bieksa is, in fact, not a forward.
  • The Green Men may not have been at the game last night, but that doesn't make it acceptable to take dumb penalties.
  • Even though Joe Thornton sent his down payment for his annual May resort house, his team is still playing hockey.
  • Any San Jose Shark watching reruns of the game on TV might be confused that this is actually the playoffs, since Pierre McGuire's expertise has been blatantly missing on Versus.
  • Any San Jose Shark that the last comment applies to should scan the arena and locate Don Cherry's colorful suit, which would reverse the previous comment.
  • Finally, the Sharks might be confused that the Conference Finals didn't begin in San Jose, but that's simply because Vancouver is a higher seed.  Maybe they think the series starts in Game 3?
  • Hey, look at the bright side, at least the Sharks know that they won't have to relocate this summer...