The Sharks were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in six games, and the injury report was released. Over the next couple of months, the Dudes and Sharks will have to address many questions about this team.

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The Sharks slide into the playoffs as a 3 seed, playing the young Oilers and Connor McDavid in the first round.

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The Sharks are off to a blistering start, scoring 10 goals in two games, and easily beating Calgary and Edmonton.  And, as crazy as it might have sounded a week ago, Scott Gomez is now a Shark, but at a very reasonable price.

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The Sharks have a better road trip than Doug predicted, but it wasn’t without problems.  Decent road wins against Colorado and Edmonton, but the Calgary game was a first-period debacle.  The dudes answer listener questions, mostly about the Sharks D (or lack thereof), and try to keep an even keel.

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Hello, I'm Devin SetoCleanGuchi. I score goals and remove stains.

If you can imagine the scene at Torrey Mitchell’s place this morning. The sound of a Flowbee at full speed. Locks of hair flying into the hallway. And a line up of Ryane Clowe, Rob Blake, hell even Jonathan Cheechoo flew in from Ottawa to get in on this goal scoring miracle.

Shaved Head You Get, Two In The Net. (Pizza not included)

The Sharks put forward a good effort against a pretty lousy team in the Edmonton Oilers, but the most encouraging thing was the rebirth of the Sharks secondary scoring – which is a major key to their long term success. With Seto netting two and Malhotra, Pavelski and Clowe getting in on the act on two of the goals must have resulted in a collective sigh of relief in the dressing room. Perhaps we should offer this head shaving solution to others in the world community. Hey Charlie Sheen, Kim Jong-il and those two losers who crashed the White House dinner – Torrey Mitchell’s Flowbee awaits and all your problems will go away.

As we look ahead to a more meaningful matchup against a better team on Monday night, the schedule makers have done the Sharks a favor. Calgary will have to play the Ducks, who have won six straight at home (are they slowly figuring it out? Don’t look now, but the Ducks are only 8 points out of the playoffs, gulp). The Flames might be beat up and ripe for the picking on Monday night and it’s a shot for the Sharks to make a statement that they can beat the good teams. While we’ve given the Sharks some grief for not playing well against the elite teams in the NHL, they are 2-0 against the last two division leaders they’ve faced, Chicago and Washington. A win over Calgary and Buffalo in the coming week will certainly make everyone feel better about this team’s chances against the quality clubs.

I’m off to Torrey Mitchell’s place to change my own luck…perhaps he should consider getting the buzzcut himself?

The Sharks have started a new winning streak against a host of ex-Sharks sprinkled among the Canadian teams, and the Dudes break it all down.  Mike and Doug also talk about the demotion of Jason Demers, and the curious claiming of Jay Leach off of waivers from Montreal.  Finally, there’s a comparison of the top-4 defensemen of the Sharks versus other top Western teams, and the speculation that a trade could be an answer to this deficiency.  Be sure to listen to the Dudes on Chomptalk this weekend- Sunday night from 8-10pm on 1220AM (or stream at http://www.kdow.biz).  The blog-off voting can be found here.

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After a horrible, putrid effort against the streaking Chicago Blackhawks, the Sharks were expected to take out their collective frustration on the hapless Edmonton Oilers, even more hapless since Ales Hemsky is out for the rest of the season.  Their best player this year (Dustin Penner) is a guy that no one would have guessed would be even their third best player if asked only a couple of months ago.

The Sharks should not have won this game.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.  They should not have won it, and they didn’t deserve to win it.  Frankly, I think the team would be better off today if they were sitting around in Vancouver doing whatever it is smart people in Vancouver do (other than criticize Steve Bernier), and slagging themselves for dropping a second game in a row to a team that doesn’t have a lot of rays of sunshine poking through the clouds.

Instead, they may be breathing a small, understated, collective sigh of relief.  A sigh they didn’t earn, because there were so many things that didn’t go well in that game, it’s impossible to name them all.  But I will concentrate on the one shortcoming that this team supposedly rectified during this off-season, with the acquisitions of Scott Nichol and Manny Malhotra.  Not faceoffs (although they managed to come out on the short side of that one too last night).  Grit.

I try to follow the NHL closely, and I had no earthly idea who JF Jacques was until last night.  Then, as I’m sure many Sharks fans did, I quickly developed a strong animosity towards him, once he checked Thornton in the back into the boards, went after Dany Heatley’s knee, then took another run at Jumbo a short time later.  Apparently, other Sharks didn’t develop this animosity like I did.

Because nothing friggin happened.  Against Philly, there were scuffles, fights, jawing, the whole bit.  In Edmonton, watching a game that was so blurry I thought I was watching the 1978 Indianapolis Racers there for a second, the Sharks looked like the 2008 Sharks, and let it slide by.  To me, that’s much worse than losing a game in November.  That’s a big step back, one that flies in the face of the “we have to move on” platitudes spouted after Chicago embarrassed them worse than any team did at the Tank since 1995.  They looked shaken.

I’m not going to generalize, saying this team is the same weak-kneed set that lost early in the playoffs the last few years, but I will feel a lot better if someone comes out tomorrow night and punches Steve Bernier in the face.