First Test Passed
October 29th, 2008, 7:43 am
That’s the title of the latest podcast, found here. The Sharks continue to roll, this time beating a legit opponent in Pittsburgh, only allowing 11 shots en route to a 2-1 win. Have to give the Pens credit: the most crucial shift is the one right after a goal, and they scored right after the Sharks scored in the third to keep the game close. Crosby and Malkin are dangerous whenever they’re on the ice, but the Sharks new-found D managed to keep them mostly in check. And for a great recap, I have to turn to the Pensblog, a regular read of mine, and one of the funniest hockey blogs on the tubes.
Of course this is only the first test of many this season, with the next one coming tomorrow against the Wings, but no one can say the Sharks are pretenders now, unless they get blown out 10-0 or something. And even then you could still make a case the Sharks are for real; The Wings seem to be on a different plane than everyone else.
If any one is interested, the last ChompTalk radio show audio can be found here.
And I can’t pass up this LOLSHARX opportunity:
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The final score really doesn’t show how much the Sharks dominated. It was a really good effort all around and the game would’ve really gotten out of hand if a couple of those shots off the post would’ve had a lucky bounce.
Marleau and Thornton were playing really well and it seemed that the lazy passes through the neutral zone that were leading to turnovers were minimized last night. To me, Thornton was much improved last night even though it didn’t show up on the scoresheet. He was all over the ice, took shots, played with lots of jump. It looked like he really wanted to show his stuff to Crosby. This is in contrast to what I was talking about in the first few games of the season: http://sharks.hockeyanalysis.com/2008/10/12/respect-the-3-0-baby/#comments
So, can we get a video, or at least a picture of Garner eating his hat when Detroit doesn’t score 8 goals on us?
Agreed this is somthing that we all need to see.