Big Joe put one in only 15 seconds in, and the Sharks continued to roll, effortlessly. The Sharks easily set the franchise record for most wins in a month, with 13. They’ve gotten 32 out of a possible 34 points in the last 17 games. You’re not going to see another streak like this in the NHL for a while, folks. It’s time to enjoy it a little.

Looks like grier and I are both eating some crowe on the Clowe situation, haha. And we discovered last night why neither of us are running the Sharks. This guy just made the Sharks even better, and the rest of the West must be swallowing hard right now. This is a team clicking big time, with the depth to bounce back from a physical series. And the way things are looking, we’ll get one in the first round against Calgary, easily the toughest team in the bottom four seeds.

Just wanted to give a little more detail on the blogger contest. Here’s the link to the archive. The way it’s going is they have a blog post with the two entries of a given matchup – it looks like they are working their way through the “Northeast” bracket right now. Then there’s a second post on who won the matchup. They’ve decided to do three matchups per day, Monday through Friday. Even at that rate, we might not even see grier’s this week. But let’s put it this way, it’ll make an impression. If you read the “articles” they’ve posted so far, all have a certain tone, style, and pacing that is fairly “professional” in nature. I put that in quotes because it seems the entrants are trying to write for a newspaper, not a blog. Personally, I like the casual style of blog posts, and the entry you will see from grier reflects that style. I’d put the chances of that backfiring pretty high, but we don’t care. We aren’t getting paid enough to care. It’d be nice to win some matchups or the whole contest, but if that means the posts have to to adhere to some style guide or usage document, no thanks. Homogeneity is not a selling point.

Last night, I went to the Tank expecting the Phoenix Coyotes to fight for their lives. If they lose, they are eliminated from Stanley Cup playoff contention. Instead, the Coyotes had little bite and could have been renamed “The Dead Cockroaches” for the way they rolled over and played dead last night. No hard hits. No fights. No chance. For a team that has scrapped all season and survived on a mantra of hard work and overachievement, Phoenix quit last night on the Great One. I’m always stoked about a Sharks win, but I was disappointed that Phoenix didn’t give our Big Boys more of a run for their money last night. Wayne must have been thinking about his next baseball parlay….oops, sorry I mean his wife Janet, the Great One doesn’t bet, right? A lousy way for Phoenix to end what really was a season where they played above expectations, especially mine. Scoring Breezy for nothing from the Ducks was a major addition, and I do believe that if they are able to add one or two experienced forwards to put the puck in the net on a regular basis, this is a playoff team next year. They will have some major league cash to throw at players like Marian Hossa or to make a trade for a high priced and expensive forward, like Martin Havlat.

I admit I was wrong about Clowe – he looked good last night but I would slide him up to the 2nd line with Marleau and Pavs and see how that goes when Grier comes back. Who is the odd man out if Clowe reclaims a spot in the line up? Looks like Goc and The Gooch will be watching the playoffs from the pressbox, not bad to have those guys in reserve in case someone gets hurt. The only wildcard is will RW shelve Shelley like he used to with Scott Parker come playoff time? My gut says no, because Shelley is a better player than Parker is, as RW has admitted himself. His is able to contribute so much more than just fights, and his punishing hits will keep the game honest against a team like Calgary or Colorado, and it looks like one of those two will be our first round opponent….Shades of playoffs past….

So I drove all day to get down to SoCal, hit brutal L.A. traffic, but still managed to make it to my friend’s with time to spare.  When I drove back today, I hit traffic again.  At 11:30am.  On a Saturday.  How Los Angelinos deal with this is a mystery to me.  I wanted to get all L.A. Story on everybody- whip out my gun from the glove compartment, and open fire.

But we made to the Honda Center about half an hour early (after waiting in more traffic on “the” 5) in order to watch the teams warm up.  At this point we’ve wandered the concourse a bit, introduced myself to Earl Sleek (Sleek, that green shirt is like a friggin’ beacon, you can see it from anywhere in the arena) and I’m already making mental notes on what I like about the Honda Center, and what I don’t.

I suppose I should have at least a paragraph on the game.  I’m not sure it really meant as much as we wanted it to- both teams were missing some key people, and both backup goalies played.  The Ducks in particular were yielding lots of space in their zone, which is very uncharacteristic for them.  It was a nice win in enemy territory, and the Sharks have earned the privilege of relaxing a bit for the next two.  I was irate that Semenov played, and not Carle.  Ridiculous choice.

Enough of real content.  Here’s the list:

How the Pond is Better

• You can get chili with your nachos.  Big plus.
• Two concourses, so there are many more bathrooms.
• They post a lot of good stats on the Jumbotrons, and have little stats crawlers during the game on the “ribbon” screens.  The Tank people need to copy this.
• Two words: Ice Girls.  I really don’t want to see that mustache guy in tight pants, so get rid of him and use the Saberkittens or something.
• They are very kind to the many Sharks fans.  Of course this is a backhanded compliment.  I didn’t take hardly any abuse at all, which I was a bit disappointed about.  One guy booed at me when when I cheered a Sharks goal, and some drunk guy yelled “Sharks suck penis!” a few times as I walked by.  Not the most innovative insult I’ve ever heard.

How the Tank is Better

• It doesn’t look like a mall on the inside the way the Pond does.
• Better sight lines from the upper deck, and people don’t lean forward as much.
• Two words: cup holders.  How can Honda, a car manufacturer, put its name to an arena with no upper deck cup holders?
• We fill the arena.  It might have been technically a sellout, but I saw whole rows empty, and the two seats next to me in 410 were empty.  A Sharks-Ducks Friday night game in March, and you can see whole groups of empty seats?
• Living in a city that’s often maligned for ignorant fans, we don’t seem to wear it on our sleeves the way the Ducks fans behind me last night did.  They did the whole “Mick-a-lick” pronounciation the whole game, and spent a good 45 seconds trying to decide how to pronounce Pavelski.   As a capper, they made fun of “Gock’s” name too.  Something tells me they don’t watch the “On the Fly: Final” too often.

All in all, a great night.  Hopefully the first of many away Sharks games that I attend.  I think grier and I are planning on making one trip each season to a different arena.

Last night’s game was a thriller at the Tank. The Sharks stood their ground and Dallas imploded in overtime, thanks to Turco’s four minute high sticking penalty. You could see this coming a mile away, as the Sharks were harassing Turco all night, crashing the crease. The crowd was all over Marty and he whined a few times to the refs – he really lost his composure after playing a great game. My gut tells me that last night was a first round playoff preview, #2 San Jose vs. #7 Dallas. The Stars have Phoenix twice, which is no cake walk as we saw on Tuesday, the Ducks, the Kings and us one more time. Last night’s demoralizing loss couldn’t have helped a dressing room that is dealing with a 2-8-0 slide.

Tonight is not a must win, but it sure would be nice. A win tonight and it’s all over – Sharks win the Pacific Division and could stand to rest a few veterans with bumps and bruises in the final games. A loss tonight and the Ducks still have a heartbeat, all-be-it a faint one, to get the #2 seed. This blog will be represented in person tonight at the Pond, for as I’m typing Mike is driving down to Anaheim for tonight’s game. I’m expecting he’ll see the Sharks lay it all on the line while hammering Kunitz every chance they get. I’m thinking there won’t be a blatant retaliation, the Sharks aren’t that type of team, even with Jody Shelley – San Jose can’t afford a five minute major or risk someone getting a suspension. David Pollack of the San Jose Mercury News has hinted that Ron Wilson is going with Brian Boucher tonight. I don’t think that would be a bad move, the Sharks have worked their asses off whenever Boucher has been in net and The Waterboy has looked strong. I think San Jose wins 3-2 tonight. Bring home a “W” Mikey and don’t wear the Matt Carle jersey!!

As for the Next Great Hockeyblogger contest we are entered in, it appears that the public isn’t allowed to vote but you are welcome to post comments to sway the judges. Who the judges are – I don’t know – but it appears that Eklund is one of them. My first entry is a revised version of who I want the Sharks to face in the playoffs. Check it out and thanks for supporting us! The matchups can be found on The Fan Blog.

The Sharks got caught with their playoff pants down last night in Phoenix. No excuses, even without Cheechoo and Rivet the Sharks should have beaten Phoenix. The Coyotes are no joke anymore, they have improved vastly since the beginning of the season and if they can get develop or acquire some top scoring talent, this is going to be a tough team to play against in future seasons, no doubt – and the Sharks still overlooked them. With two huge games coming up against Dallas and ‘Da Ducks – San Jose took the first two periods off – but I do believe there is a silver lining in this OT loss. The Sharks could have checked out but JR and Thunder Joe wouldn’t allow it – they clawed all the way back from down 3-0 and got a point out of this mess. I think the team and the coaching staff have to take Sunday’s game very seriously against the Yotes. With the Pacific Division all but in the bag, it is possible that the Sharks will draw the streaking Canadian version of Phoenix, the Edmonton Oilers, in Round One. While I think it’s a long shot and the Oilers will cool off in the next week and fall just short of Colorado and Vancouver, IF the Sharks get Edmonton – they better be ready for more of the same business they got last night. Young team. Tough coach. Hard play all night. The Sharks, once they got their act together, were able to put a beating down in the final period, outscoring Phoenix 4-1 (and the Phoenix goal was all Nabby’s fault – he deserved to be pulled). Consider this a warning shot Sharks. Learn a lesson from last night.

A few minor observations. Ron Wilson has no confidence in Matt Carle. Only twelve minutes of ice time last night. I have a sneaking suspicion that Carle will not be a Shark next year, if Ron Wilson is still the coach. Also, it looks like Ryane Clowe might be shelved until next year, and I think it’s the right call. Maybe he will be on the playoff roster and if a top line player goes down, they might run him out there – but it appears Clowe just isn’t ready for action yet. Why rush an important part of the team’s future when he isn’t needed right now. Where would he play anyways? Do you bench Jody Shelley? Setoguchi? Rissmiller? No, no and no.

Big game Thursday. A little taste of revenge for San Jose after Dallas has man-handled us this season. Look for a big win at the Tank.

It’s Monday morning, and time to confess. ‘cantstopthegrier’s real name isn’t ‘cantstopthegrier’. There might be some people reading that are new to the Internets, so I figured I’d start slow. The reason for this confession will be clear in a minute. Actually, I’m about to reveal his real name. It’s Doug Santana.

Now before you all jump to google and find his sex tape, there’s actually a good reason for revealing this personal information about my long-time friend. As loyal readers are no doubt aware, Doug is a fan of the hockey rumors, and by extension, the biggest hockey rumor site, hockeybuzz.com. For those of you that aren’t aware of it or don’t read it, I understand. But it is a force. According to Eklund, the “anonymous” blogger there that posts most of the rumors, hockeybuzz gets twenty million hits a month. That’s a hell of a lot. That’s about a million times more that we get. Other than Eklund, they have bloggers dedicated to every team in the NHL. There are two Sharks bloggers there currently, and we’ve commented on their posts before, Ryan Garner and Mark Freitas.

Where am I going with this? Doug entered us into the “Next Great Hockey Blogger” competition on hockeybuzz, sending Eklund links to five of our past posts. And here is the starting bracket. As you can see, there’s Doug’s name at #12 in the Southwest bracket. Out of 416 applications, Doug has made it to the top 64. I actually wanted to reveal all this last week, but we held off, because the idea was for both of us to be in the contest as a team. Eklund is apparently not the greatest correspondent, and Doug’s emails reiterating the situation have gone into a black hole.

Either way, the first post is due tomorrow morning, and Doug is working on it right now. I want to get the word out, because I think the way the contest will work is that fans will vote on the individual matchups. Get ready to vote for us! Or at least read the post and make up your mind for yourself. I will be posting progress notes on the whole contest as time goes along, so stay tuned.

Tonight’s game against the Ducks should be a doozy. I invite you to read Sleek’s post at BoC’s on the game tonight. The reason I’m eagerly awaiting this matchup is not because of the playoff implications, however. I think the Sharks certainly have the upper hand to the #2 seed, and with several games against L.A. and Phoenix, it’s ours to lose. Even if we lost all the remaining games to the Ducks and Stars we could still capture the #2.

Of course I am worried about these upcoming games being a playoff preview. It’s likely that the Sharks will have to go through one or both of the Pacific teams to win the West. If we manage to crater even when we’re on this good streak, I don’t like our chances. So here’s my internal multiple-personality-disorder point/counterpoint on the game tonight:

Why the Sharks Will Win

• They’ve gotten a point in 14 straight games, and are playing their best hockey of the season by miles
• Ducks don’t have Stompy McCutYourLeg
• The Ducks-Sharks matchup has gone to the shootout 4 times out of six this season, and we have the Secret Shootout Weapon – Joe Pavelski (10 of 13 lifetime).
• Semenov is a likely healthy scratch
• SOU-PY! SOU-PY! SOU-PY!

Why the Ducks Will Win

• They own the Sharks this season (5-0-1)
• They get to play the Sharks at home, who are only 18-13-6. But the Ducks are 17-17-1 away. Hm, maybe that’s a wash.
• Ducks are 27-10-4 since Mr. My-Vajayjay-Hurts-and-I-Don’t-Want-To-Come-To-Camp-Or-Play-The-First-Three-Months kicked Andy McDonald out on his keister.
• Todd Bertuzzi has remembered that being 6-3, 245 with good hands is actually an asset in the NHL.
• The gravitational field caused by Giguere’s giant pads is growing inversely proportional to the amount of hair he has.

See you there.

The big news last night wasn’t that the Sharks gave up the lead on three different occasions and won in the shootout; it was the Kurtis Foster injury. Foster and Torrey Mitchell were skating hard for a puck behind the Wild net- Foster trying to touch-up for icing, Mitchell trying to prevent Foster from doing so. At full-out breakneck speed, Foster changed direction a bit, and Mitchell made contact. Foster ended up going into the boards so hard it was like a shotgun blast. The damage- a badly broken fibula that required surgery.

The NHL just decided not to suspend Mitchell. I think it’s a good call, although clearly I’m a Sharks fan and I’m biased. Suspending Mitchell would have been punishing him for the outcome of the play, not his conduct during it. When I saw the play at game-speed, I didn’t even think it should be a penalty. Since I haven’t found a working video yet, I have no reason to change my opinion. It was a hard play that went wrong, you see a hotly contested puck many times during a game, and a slip at the wrong time could result in serious injury like we saw last night.

It’s also sparked a debate about bringing in no-touch icing. I don’t have a really strong opinion one way or the other, but I’d lean a little towards keeping things the way they are, for two reasons. The first is the last thing hockey needs is more stoppages. Re-instituting tag-up offsides was a good move. Taking out a point of contention for the puck in favor of yet-another faceoff seems weird to me. The second is that it’s purely reactive measure that won’t have much benefit for the health of players. In my mind, there are better things the league could do to reduce injury (like require players to have their chin-strap somewhere near their chin), but if this incident leads to a rule change, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

Quite busy the last couple days, and I know grier is too, but let me give a couple of thoughts in handy bullet-point form:

• Oilers game was a little too reminiscent of those several games earlier in the year when we had a thousand shots but couldn’t score.  Roloson stood on his head, and for that, I give him props.  But EDM is second-worst in goals against in the West, only behind L.A.  If we can’t score against them, what about against a decent defensive team?
• Speaking of L.A., we couldn’t score a bunch against them either.  It got real interesting in that last five minutes, when the Kings threw caution to the wind.  The onslaught was turned aside, but I don’t like the trend.
• And speaking of decently defensive teams, you would think we’d be seeing one in the Wild.   But you’d be wrong.  Minnesota is exactly in the middle of the West in goals against, and 9th of 16 in goals for.  They seem to exemplify mediocrity.  Hmm, that’s a question for my philosophy blog: is it possible to exemplify mediocrity?

With the Sharks swarming and gunning for win number twelve tomorrow vs. the never-say-die Oilers, I thought it might be time to look three weeks into our future and play another game of Who’d You Rather? Assuming we don’t go into total meltdown and San Jose finishes somewhere between two and five in the playoff seeding, here are my personal preferences for 1st round playoff opponents in decending order, from most desired to most dreaded. So – Who’d You Rather?

1) Minnesota Wild – They are skidding like Kirstie Alley at a Taco Bell, and as I’ve said before, I just don’t get how this team wins games. They are so boring and if we play the Wild, I will be “Wild” with excitement for a four game sweep. They can’t match up with San Jose at all. My clear first choice for Round one.

2) Vancouver Canucks – Beside Luongo, what do they really have going for them? The fact that the Sharks swept the season series in four games played in Sept-Oct, before they actually pulled their head out, means Vancouver might be easy pickings for San Jose in Round One. With no Ohlund and no secondary scoring after the Sedin line, the Tank will be chanting “Canucks-Suck” in Round One.

3) Nashville Predators – I think they will be on the outside looking in once the playoffs begin, but if they are in the picture – I wouldn’t mind dancing with them again. The Sharks own Nashville in late April and this Preds-Lite club would lose in five games to San Jose – Nashville is without a playoff tested backstop and really no scoring to speak of. The big thing that concerns me about playing Nashville is that the third time around, the Preds could just give up and go for cheap shots late in a series. As JR said, “Tootoo is a dumb dumb”.

4) Dallas Stars – Suprised? I was a little too after I read this over, but here’s the thing – I still don’t buy Marty Turco stock in late April. Shakira’s hips don’t lie and neither do Turco’s playoff numbers. 11 wins and two first round exits where his GAA was 3.35. Compare that with Nabby’s 24 playoff wins and lifetime 2.20 GAA and you can see why I wouldn’t mind pressing my luck against the Choker, Marty Turco. I think they might be regretting the Richards deal, since his initial 5 point outburst, he has three points and is a -3, while the Stars have gone 2-4-0 in the Richards era. Oops.

5) Colorado Avalanche – I would be dreading this match up in Round One. This team could have enough juice left to cause a lot of problems for a higher seed in Round One, if they don’t end up being the #3 themselves (I don’t they will, it should be Calgary). Forsberg, Sakic, Smyth, Foote and the revenge of Scott Hannan bring back playoff nightmares of seasons past. We should beat them, but I’d rather not put myself through the mental anguish. This series would go a brutal six games.

6) Anaheim Ducks – Simply put, we have to go through them at some point. May as well do it early.

7) Calgary Flames – My last choice for first round match up. I don’t think we match up well against Calgary and they have some emotional victories against us this year, so all the momentum is in their court. They play physical and have the skill players to beat you in transition. Add the fact that Kipper could shut anyone down at any point and Calgary is last on my list for desired first round pairings.

The Sharks must win the Pacific division! Sunday isn’t going to be like last night vs. St. Louis. While Edmonton has won three of their last four, their wins have come vs. Columbus, St. Louis and Chicago – not exactly the cream of the rink – but Edmonton is a true pain in the ass and won’t stand for getting their ass handed to them. It should be physical, and it will be a good warm up for next Friday’s physical affair with the Ducks. Let’s make it TWELVE!