Round One: Anaheim @ San Jose

I think if the Sharks take control of game six the way the Caps did in their game six then I think it's going to be a Sharks win and we could see two 3 games to 1 comebacks in the first round.

Purdy: Sharks hurting, but win would ease pain

By Mark Purdy

San Jose Mercury News Sports Columnist, 04/27/2009 06:18:10 AM PDT

It hurts to do what the Sharks did Saturday night.

But they need to hurt some more tonight.

It hurts to go where the Sharks went Saturday, sending their bodies toward the net where they know sticks and body checks are waiting, or skating to exhaustion on every shift, or taking a painful hit to make a pass that might lead to nothing but also might lead to a goal.

But the Sharks need to go there again tonight for 60 minutes or more.

Otherwise, the Sharks will go straight from hurt to home. The Anaheim Ducks will win the series.

"This next game is going to be the hardest we've had all year," said Sharks defenseman Dan Boyle, who knows hard.

In 2004 with Tampa Bay, Boyle broke his right thumb in the first game of Round 2 in the Stanley Cup playoffs. He played with the broken thumb the rest of the way as the Lightning went on to win the Cup.

It's a good example of playing beyond hurt, of going until you can't go further and then going some more. Over the years, the Sharks have been accused of lacking that quality. Their record of maddening early playoff exits has made the finger-pointing more difficult to refute.

And the fingers are out in force, even after Saturday's meat-grinder victory, because our beloved Los Tiburones still trail the Ducks three games to two. It means the Sharks remain in better position to be eliminated than to eliminate the accusation.

However, if you were looking for a sign —no matter how small — that this could be a different Sharks team, the dressing room after Saturday's game was instructive.

Joe Thornton looked utterly spent after the best playoff game of his life. Other Sharks moved with sore deliberation. They were plainly drained. It resembled an NFL postgame locker room — except that in hockey, the next game is two days later, not seven days later.

But what do you know? Sunday morning, every Sharks player was back on the ice for a practice session, skating drills and firing pucks. It made you wonder if the cliché really is true, about how the best athletes in any sport find a way to push through a wall to the next level before they can win a championship.

"I don't know about hitting a wall," Boyle said. "But for every team at some point, you probably get to a place where it's easier to give up than to fight for it. "...
Your body is telling you it doesn't want to go, and you've got to convince your body to get past it."

A chunk of that job belongs to the coach, as well. And in trying to move his team's needle past you-have-more-in-the-tank-than-you-think, Todd McLellan is not mincing words with his Sharks.

"Right now, maybe it's not as hard to do as it was two weeks ago," McLellan said, "because people are questioning their character."

Not just questioning it. Insulting it. Canadian television analyst Mike Milbury even predicted that after Thornton's performance in the first four games against Anaheim, it was quite possible that Team Canada General Manager Steve Yzerman would leave Thornton off the roster in Vancouver next winter.

"I don't see how Steve can pick him for the Canadian Olympic team — not off what he's shown in the postseason," Milbury said. "My bottom line is effort. If a guy doesn't use effort, all bets are off."

Hmm. Maybe it was no coincidence that after Milbury uttered those words before Game 5, Thornton hurled himself fiercely onto the ice for the opening faceoff and barked out words to Anaheim center Ryan Getzlaf along with some shoves and pokes.

Thornton was asked about the conversation later and joked — here is the interesting part — that he could have been talking with Getzlaf about "maybe being on Team Canada together."

Thornton surely is nursing some injury this morning. Patrick Marleau has an undisclosed injury. Mike Grier probably came back too soon from his late-season "lower-body" issue and can't be pain-free. Without revealing too much, let's just say there are a lot of knee braces in the locker room. Does it matter? If it does, the Sharks already are defeated.

There is a famous hockey story: In 1983, the Edmonton Oilers were in the dawn of their dynasty. Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey were young players with terrific potential. They reached their first Stanley Cup finals that spring and ran into the veteran New York Islanders, who had won three straight Cups.

After four games, the Islanders had made it four championships in a row. The Oilers were disappointed but happy about how hard they had played. They felt they had given it all they had, had taken their best shot. But then, on the way out of the arena, some Oilers walked past the Islanders' dressing room. They decided to peek inside.

In his autobiography, Edmonton defenseman Kevin Lowe later recounted the scene.

The Oilers expected to see a group of happy Islanders, sharing champagne and cigars and backslaps. Instead, Lowe wrote, he and his teammates saw men hooked up to IV units, men with ice packs all over their bodies, men limping in and out of the trainer's room.

By comparison, Lowe realized, the Oilers had emerged from the series in relatively good health and were leaving the arena with little pain. Then and only then, Lowe said, did he and his Edmonton teammates understand what it took to become a Cup champion.

The Sharks aren't within a mile of there yet. But as long as they keep hurting, they have a chance.

Contact Mark Purdy at mpurdy@mercurynews.com.

Umm... WTF? Is this game not being televised? It appears CBC has their regular programming for tonight and TSN is airing the Calgary-Chicago game. Dung.


EDIT: Oops... my bad. I checked CBC's website and it's listed. Oddly when I check the Rogers guide it's not listed.

Trying to watch these games at the same time is going to be tough.

Bring in another TV. Solved.

I only found one of them on the "dial". I think it was Chicago/Calgary on TSN. Is the other game on CBC? I may have missed it since I didn't think of looking past 10PM.

Time for me to go home, lay on the couch and overload on hockey.

Go Ducks, Go Hawks! Let's Diddle some Dung up.

Hm...that would make for a VERY interesting second round, eh...

Well, it ain't done til it's done.

Tonight should be ELECTRIC.

:%%:

ducks run into penalty problems in the first 3 in a row and michalek getsa goal on the third

the refs are not letting anything go tonight

That was awesome. Roenick 'falls' on Hiller and you could see Getzlaf saying he was gonna go back down and do the same thing. The ref was saying 'go ahead' and laughing...then Getzlaf did.

One of the best players in the league, this Getlaf guy. A punk, but a good punk, if that makes any sense.

Getzlaf IMO the best center Canada has, that includes Crosby. Getzlaf is that good.

Sharks are done, no real surprise there. Things will be interesting in San Jose this summer.

Hiller got two shutouts in this series.

The Wings have every reason to be afraid of the 2007 Stanley Cup Champions.

Scott Niedermayer wants another ring. He only has four.

:%%:

San Jose 1, Anaheim 4

	1	2	3	T
SAN	1	0	0	1
ANA	1	2	1	4

Final

ANAHEIM WINS BEST OF SEVEN WEST QUARTERFINAL 4-2

10:30 PM ET, April 27, 2009
Honda Center, Anaheim, California

Ducks finish what they started, get 36 saves from Hiller to end Sharks' year

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Although the San Jose Sharks wouldn't go down without a fight or two, the Anaheim Ducks can take a punch as impressively as they took this playoff series from the NHL's best regular-season team.

Teemu Selanne and Francois Beauchemin scored their first playoff goals 43 seconds apart in the second period, and the eighth-seeded Ducks ousted the Presidents' Trophy-winning Sharks from the first round with a 4-1 victory Monday night.

Jonas Hiller made 36 saves to finish his phenomenal playoff series debut for the Ducks, who won a fight-filled Game 6 clincher in a remarkable playoff upset two years after winning the franchise's only Stanley Cup.

With a dynamic offensive effort that negated all the Sharks' physical bluster, Anaheim became the third team to beat the NHL's top regular-season club in the first round since 2000, and just the fifth since 1968. The Ducks are the eighth No. 8 seed to win a playoff series since 1994, largely dominating the league's first all-California postseason series in 40 years.

The simmering in-state rivalry boiled into a slugfest with 60 total penalty minutes and a long series of brawls, including a surprising scrap between stars Joe Thornton and Ryan Getzlaf 2 seconds after the opening faceoff.

Thornton pummeled Getzlaf in the fight -- but the Ducks center landed the decisive blow with 2:56 to play, scoring an unassisted goal that wrapped up the series.

Corey Perry also scored as Anaheim advanced to face second-seeded Detroit, which swept Columbus out of the first round. The defending Stanley Cup champions are favorites to defend their title -- but few gave the Ducks much chance against the once-mighty Sharks, either.

Evgeni Nabokov made 28 saves and Milan Michalek scored the game's first goal for the Sharks, who completed the biggest playoff collapse in a franchise history full of them. San Jose led the NHL with franchise records for points (117) and wins (53) during the regular season, but the club has been past the second round of the postseason just once, in 2004.

Fast Facts


• The Ducks improved to 9-0 at home when they have a chance to close out a playoff series.
• The Ducks' Ryan Getzlaf (two goals and six assists in the series) scored the final goal after fighting Joe Thornton in the opening seconds of the game. Getzlaf earned a Gordie Howe-style hat trick (one goal, one assist, one fight).
• The Sharks became only the fourth Presidents' Trophy winner to get eliminated in the first round.
-- ESPN Stats & Information

The Ducks were outshot in every game, but overcame it with timely scoring and a phenomenal playoff debut by Hiller, the Swiss goalie who allowed just 10 goals and posted two shutouts.

Getzlaf and Thornton dropped their gloves immediately -- something happened between the centers during Game 5 in San Jose on Saturday night, where they exchanged insults and shoves on at least two occasions. Thornton landed at least two flush punches to Getzlaf's face, eventually landing on top of the younger Anaheim player.

Selanne broke a tie during a power play, slipping the puck in front of the net where it apparently glanced off a San Jose stick. A few moments later, Beauchemin launched a shot from the blue line that appeared to glance off Dan Boyle's stick and past Nabokov. The Ducks then were free to sit back and take the Sharks' best shots in the third period.

San Jose has won four Pacific Division titles in the past seven seasons, but has never made it beyond the 2004 Western Conference finals, losing three straight second-round series before this humiliating first-round ouster under rookie coach Todd McLellan.

The loss might be the final game in the 20-year career of Jeremy Roenick, who postponed retirement to make two more runs at his first Stanley Cup. Rob Blake, the 39-year-old defenseman who signed a one-year deal with San Jose last summer, also could be gone, as could 43-year-old Claude Lemieux, who made a comeback after a 5 1/2-year NHL absence.

Game notes
Anaheim improved to 9-0 in franchise history when playing at home with a chance to close out a postseason series. ... Two scraps near the second intermission briefly put four Sharks and three Ducks in the penalty boxes. ... Beauchemin briefly went to the dressing room in the first period after a shot hit him in the left foot.

Has a 1 vs 8 series ever been so lopsided in favor of the 8 seed?

PKC wrote:Has a 1 vs 8 series ever been so lopsided in favor of the 8 seed?

BTW just to put things in perspective... with the exception of their run to the Stanley Cup final in 2004, the Flames haven’t made it out of the first round of playoffs since winning the Cup in 1989.

The mighty Sharks have fallen to the Ducks, and now begins the questions in SJ, what went wrong, should they blow up the team, should they not? Thankfully this team has taken the title of perennial chokers away from the Sens.

SensFan71 wrote:The mighty Sharks have fallen to the Ducks, and now begins the questions in SJ, what went wrong, should they blow up the team, should they not? Thankfully this team has taken the title of perennial chokers away from the Sens.

It is fashionable to use the word 'choke', but the fact is, as Dan Boyle said, the Ducks were a better team in every respect.

Props to Anaheim.

And is the Sharks' history of first round failure any more of a 'choke' than the annual first round fizzling of the Flames?

The fact is, both San Jose and Calgary were defeated by superior clubs.

Let us give credit to the victors, and salute the vanquished, as they are all men of valour.

On to Round Two!