Brutal, Just Brutal

After a fairly good outing against the always-bad Blackhawks on Thursday, the Sharks go completely in the tank (believe me, no pun intended) against the Ducks last night. It was 2-1 after 1, but 6-1 after two periods. The Sharks showed a little pluck in the 3rd en route to a 7-4 loss.

The Ducks are better than the Sharks. It's just that simple. They have better D, better O, better goaltending. The Ducks first line matches up almost even with our first line, but their second line is head and shoulders better than ours. Penner, Getzlaf, and Perry made the Sharks' young D look foolish, and even the third line played well. Travis Moen went right around Marc-Edouard Vlasic on two occasions, scoring on the first, and barely missing on the second. Matt Carle might get sent back to the minors after last night's effort, including an outlet pass that was intercepted between the Sharks' circles, for God's sake. I think Rob Niedermayer thought it was Christmas.

After the Ducks put the game out of reach, they sat back a bit, and the Sharks surged. But even Philly could protect a 5 goal lead, and the Ducks managed. There were several tense moments after Cheech made it 6-4 late in the third, but after inexplicably keeping Toskala in the net on a Sharks power play, the Ducks scored an empty netter as soon as the PP expired. Generally you keep a goalie in net on your power play, because the other team won't get penalized for missing an empty net (no icing on the kill), but in this case, I think the Sharks should have gone for broke. Try and salvage some worth out of the game.

I think I'll be watching tonight's game while peeking through my fingers.