Saturday, December 01, 2007

A Little Something Extra

There was a little extra spring in the Sharks' step last night en route to their win against Colorado. Joe again was "The Man"™ in scoring two goals and assisting on the third. I actually thought at first that the third goal went in off the defenseman's skate and not Grier's, which would have given Joe the hat trick.

It would be easy to launch into a lament here about the lack of secondary scoring and so on, but there were several encouraging things about the Sharks play last night:

  • They actually carried the puck into the offensive zone most of the time on the power play. And pretty much every time they did that, they maintained control and set up. Imagine!
  • Like the game against the Kings, they weren't afraid to stand in front of the net. Colorado's biggest defenseman is now Scott Hannan, who isn't quite big enough to bang with some of the bodies we got.
  • Save the 30 seconds at the end of the second period where Colorado scored that power play goal, I'd say the Sharks played a complete game. Rarely were they pinned in their end, and they were able to keep the puck low and give the Avs fits by maintaining possession behind the net and in the corners.
Always great to see stuff like that, but the inevitable question is, can they keep it up? That's a question that won't be answered until Monday against the Avs or Wednesday against the Stars.

I did attend the "Ice Insights" thing last night at the Tank, open to season ticket holders. The four broadcasters for the Sharks fielded questions from the angry mob. And they did seem angry. Stuff like "why the F is Wilson juggling the lines so much", "who should be benched", and "who should be traded". The most interesting answer of the night was when Drew said the three players he would bench were Patty (no surprise), Cheech (<yawn>), and Mike Grier (hey now!). He didn't have time to elaborate on that, but it was surprising. I'm hoping our Grier might do a Real Grier Breakdown.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just to echo what you were saying about the Ice Insights session, I too was there and found it interesting that when the question came up of "who has the most passion?", Drew was quick to shake his head at the suggestion of Grier having that "fire".

It was also interesting to see the "discussion" between Drew, Jamie, and some fans when they talked about which goaltender the Sharks trusted more, Nabby or Toskala.

Mike said...

Hey, thanks for stopping by. I wasn't too surprised by their pumping up of Nabby, given Tosk is gone and they work for the team, but the Grier comments were interesting. I remember Jamie said something about Grier "pacing himself". Good food for thought.