6th Sense

I've developed a sixth sense this season. An intuition that tells me when the Sharks will be scored on. Not the Kovalchukian goals that come straight from faceoffs, nor the Santorelli-type goals that are fluky at best. No, I'm talking about when the Sharks just can't get a clear. It starts out alright- the other team is in the zone, yeah, but Nemo can help us out, and our D will get it done. But then they don't. I see clearing attempts, but inevitably they are blocked right at the blueline. I see guys try to pass to teammates to move out of the zone, but inevitably that pass ends up on the other team's stick. The clearing attempts aren't working. It isn't as though the other team has a great cycle going (although sometimes they do, but that isn't a necessity for this scenario). It's simply that the Sharks can't possibly manage a clear. And then I get that gut feeling. "The Sharks just simply can't clear the puck. It's gonna wind up in the back of our net." And sure enough, it does. The worst part is that every time this happens, there was an opportunity to clear the puck at some point in time, but it was wasted either by waiting too long and turning over the puck, or not putting enough on the clear in an attempt to avoid icing. At the time, they didn't seem like costly mistakes. But then those mistakes start to add up. It gets to the point where I know the other team will score if the Sharks don't clear. I wish they would just take the icing call- it would be better. Even if you end up losing the faceoff, you have stopped the play. You've stopped the rush, you've slowed the momentum of the other team, which is more important than getting a clean clear, something which the Sharks weren't able to do anyways. I'm no NHL Head Coach, but taking an icing call over a goal seems like a logical thing to me. But I'm just another fan ranting on the internet, so this is just one more problem the Sharks inevitably won't fix. And if they don't, it's going to haunt them in the playoffs- if they make it that far.

The Sharks also ran into some penalty trouble in the 2nd, so you get a picture of the penalty box. Perhaps all that PKing wore out the Sharks for the 3rd...

And now I've broken my English teacher's biggest rule of thumb- large, unbroken chunks of text. But I don't feel like breaking up that way-too-long paragraph, so you get a picture instead.