This Sucks

About 3 or 4 times each day, I think about the Sharks and all of a sudden, it feels like a great weight is pushing down on my chest.

Still not ready to talk about it. Stay tuned.

Ugh

Worst day of the year. Every year.

Great Mysteries Throughout History

The Chum Bucket presents a list of Things We May Never Understand...

Who built Stonehenge?



How to solve a Rubix Cube


Does Area 51 exist?

And if you dare, proceed to explore the most mysterious of them all...




Which Sharks team will show up tonight???

These guys?


Or these guys?


Maybe some things we just aren't meant to understand.

This post was brought to you by Google Image Search - your one-stop blogging resource when your team gives you wildly inconsistent play and Jekyll-and-Hyde-like effort from game to game. Have no idea what your team is going to do next game? Use Google Image Search!

Seriously though, take a stab at what you think is going to happen tonight in the comments. Your guess is as good as mine, which is as good as a blind monkey throwing darts or a kitten pooping on a roulette wheel.

Do It Now

FAIL

Danny Fuckin' Boyle

Dan Boyle doesn't skate on ice, the ice skates on Dan Boyle.

Goddamnit I love this guy.

Now I still have major concerns about the long term success of this club in the playoffs, concerns that a 4-3 squeaker did not completely address.

But fucking a, that was a spectacular game, and a great Sharks win is a great Sharks win. I'll always be on board for a thrilling Sharks game.

I swear, if they string together like 14 or 15 more like this we could be on to something.

Ha! Fuck You, Corey Perry!

The Living Dead

They're still alive, but not really.

They still look the same on the outside, but they're not. They've changed.

The San Jose Sharks are the living dead. Skating husks of humanity, no life left, only a vague shadow of what they used to be.

The Sharks have to win 4 of 5 games against a team they've shown absolutely no ability to beat. The season opening squash of Anaheim seems so long ago.

Should the Sharks miraculously pull that off, it will likely take a brutal and grinding 7 games. Following that, San Jose would have the pleasure of facing Calgary or Chicago. Given the Sharks' struggles versus an 8 seed, how do you think they would fare against a high quality 4 or 5 seed? Meanwhile Detroit and Vancouver look poised to cruise past their respective opponents and rest up for a round 2 match-up.

As much as I want to believe there's still a Stanley Cup in San Jose's future, I know that this year, it's over.

If your best friend was bit, infected, you'd want to believe he's okay. But he won't be. The damage has been done. There's no going back.

All that's left is to end the suffering.

Drought

San Jose's goal scoring recently, or a close up of Ryan Getzlaf's head.

My faith in this team is being stretched to its limits. As Fear The Fin noted, San Jose has gone 282 consecutive minutes without an even strength goal. Add that to an abysmal 0 for 6 on the PP, and the Sharks are trapped in the middle of an arid goalless desert, with nary a drop in sight.

Still, there were enough positives to take away from last night's game that I still have the faith. But if we're still stuck in the Sahara after that... call in the vultures.

Now With Mainstream Media Acceptability!

The New York Times hockey blog - Slap Shot - asked for some pre-series prognostication from yours truly. Yeah, THAT New York Times. Check out my answers here. My personal favorite:

Do your team’s fans have an opinion about the other team’s fans or the city they play in, and if so, what is it?

We could not have more respect for Ducks fans. From the fans that show up only 30 minutes late to those that don’t have a more important Laker game to watch that day, we salute you. All five of you.

Waiting

I absolutely hate this week.

For most hockey-heads this is one of the best weeks of the year. Over half of the league has qualified for the playoffs and dreams of lifting the Cup are still alive for most. Once your team locks up a playoff seed, anything can happen.

For me, though, I just can't stand the wait.

For about the last 3 months we've known the Sharks would make the playoffs. I've hated waiting this last week for the first playoff puck to drop.

For 10 months of the year, I wait for the only games that matter. The games of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

And then, there is the worst wait of all. For the better part of a decade, the San Jose Sharks have been a favorite to defeat all challengers and to raise a Stanley Cup Championship banner to the rafters of HP Pavilion. Fellow Sharks fans, I don't need to tell you that this has been the most excruciating wait of all. It has been long, it has been painful, and worst of all, we don't know when it will end.

But none of that matters at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, 2009.

The year-long wait for the San Jose Sharks Stanley Cup playoff run is over.

The 3 months of waiting for the grinding regular season to finally end is over.

The 10 months of waiting for the Sharks to get another chance at glory is over.

And for a few weeks, we San Jose Sharks fans can forget the past and live for the future. The puck will drop tomorrow night at center ice and 17,000 of my closest friends will turn the Shark Tank into a cacophonous house of horrors for any team unfortunate enough to enter. This is my favorite moment of the year.

It's playoff time. LET'S GO SHARKS!!!

Flow Chart 2009

Fight Night

I continue to obsess only over the bottom wrungs of the Western Conference playoff ladder. It helps distract me from the Sharks.

As you well know, San Jose has clinched #1 in the West (HOORAY!). Now we just watch and wait to see who lands in 8th. If the playoffs are the main event, tonight provides a hell of an undercard:

1st bout - Nashville at Minnesota - 5 p.m.

2 teams who absolutely, without a doubt, have to win this game. Minnesota is eliminated from the playoffs with anything less than 2 points. Nashville actually plays their 82nd game tonight. Should the Preds fail to record a point, St. Louis can eliminate them by earning a single point later in the night.

2nd bout - Columbus at St. Louis - 5:30 p.m.

Columbus locks up the #6 seed with a point in either this or their final game. The Blues will know a lot more about their playoff destiny at some point during the 3rd when the 1st bout wraps up. They're still in a dog fight for a playoff spot.

3rd bout - Dallas at Anaheim - 7:00 p.m.

Dallas is out of the playoffs but is still giving us reasons to watch. Anaheim locks up a playoff seed with a home win, but the Stars are 2-0 in Anaheim this season, outscoring the Ducks 8-4.

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Hey, Fear The Fin asked for my opinion on who is deserving of hardware on the Sharks. I told them Patrick Marleau. You can read my insightful opinions, and check out a much better blog than mine, here. (Hey, they're talking about masturbation in the comments, that's my gimmick!)

Also, check back tomorrow for a flow chart for potential Sharks first round match-ups. I normally don't post on weekends, but I'll get out of bed around noon to make a flow chart.

Happy Fan Appreciation Day!

Enjoy your complimentary Airplane Sickness Bag:

Hopefully the Sharks will score a hat trick so you have a reason to throw it back.

More Math Nerdery

Those Magic Numbers are so tantalizingly close... It's unbelievable to think about how much this team has accomplished and yet how far they still have to go.

The Blue Jackets, Ducks, Blues, Predators, and Wild are all still potential 1st round match-ups for San Jose. By my math, there are over 1500 point scoring scenarios between those 5 teams. Quite a contrast from last year, where I whipped up this flowchart by April 4th. Sports Club Stats projects St. Louis as the Sharks most likely opponent at 43%.

Fuck You, Corey Perry

Good Night, Sweet Prince

I never linked to it or mentioned it, perhaps because I took it for granted, but for the last two months, the best hockey comedy on the interwebs was Fake Brian Burke's Twitter account. And now it's gone.

You can read the whole back story here, but in summary, a Maple Leafs fan and blogger has been posting Twitter updates as Toronto GM Brian Burke. It's some of the funniest shit I've ever read. The first link up there has every post with a few highlighted as favorites. My personal faves:

- Ran into (HockeyBuzz blogger) Eklund last night. He kept grilling me about trades and rumors. Finally I just paid him for the pizza and slammed the door.
3:07 PM Feb 3rd

- Can we just pull our goalie for an extra attacker during the shootout?
10:29 PM Feb 19th

- Is every coach who loses to us this season going to be fired? Because that could end up being as many as four or five more guys.
12:57 PM Feb 23rd

- (Toronto goalie) Pogge was so upset after last night's game that he threw himself in front of my car - but it went through his legs! So I backed over him.
2:55 PM Mar 29th

I left out a bunch so be sure to check out more at Down Goes Brown. Thanks for the laughs.

BREAKING NEWS: NHL to Eliminate East Coast Bias by Eliminating West Coast

TORONTO, CANADA – In a move widely supported by the media and the only fans that matter, the National Hockey League today announced the end of any favoritism towards East Coast teams by eliminating the West Coast.

By the start of the 2009-2010 season, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman plans to have completely eliminated the pesky and nagging presence of some of the league’s premiere teams. “NBC kept having to fly all their equipment to Dallas and whatnot,” said Bettman, “We really have to keep the Peacock happy or else they won’t renew our crappy contract.” Bettman was also overjoyed at the elimination of lengthy, cross-country flights. “I get really cranky and sometimes cry because my ears hurt. Plus the movie always sucks! I want to watch ‘CARS’ again! VROOM VROOM!!!”

A variety of methods will be employed to accomplish the league’s goal. The five teams in the Central division will simply be moved to the Eastern Conference. The conference will then consist of Atlantic, Northeast, Southeast, and the newly-created Westeast divisons.

Hockey fans frequently complained about not being able to see their favorite players from the Western Conference due to a poorly balanced broadcast schedule. To fix this problem, the best players from the Western Conference have been raffled off to teams in the East. Now fans will be able to see Joe Thornton, Jarome Iginla, and Roberto Luongo during the 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 18th matchups of Rangers vs. Flyers on NBC.

Remaining left coast franchises will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

“We’re just going to stop picking up Phoenix’s calls and hope they go away,” claimed Bettman.

The Anaheim Ducks will be eliminated as a franchise. The team’s 2007 Championship will be redacted from the record books and everyone will pretend that it never happened. Southern California hockey fans are said to be elated with having so much time to jump off the bandwagon.