10/3/09 Sharks @ Ducks 7p

So, put simply, Thursday sucked. Evgeni Nabokov looked rusty, the offense looked off-kilter, and the defense looked, well, I don't know how it looked, because most of the game I couldn't really see it.

Colorado, full of energy from their 5 day Joe Sakic slurpathon (might be a slight exaggeration), hit the ice and hit the scoreboard and hit the back of the net and hit a lot of stuff, winning 5-2. #3 pick in last summers draft Matt Duchene didn't have a goal, but looked flashy for the Avalanche.

Dany Heatley had a couple nice chances, and another one that was Teemu Selanne-esque (you know what I'm talking about), but hey, it was his first game as a Shark, the stick was a little tight in his hands, no worries. Mutinied Captain turned poop-deck swabber, Patrick Marleau potted both goals for the Teal, who are now really really really bad in season openers, and unspeakably horrible in road season openers.

Tonight is a new night, however, still in an energized building (after the third inning and before the seventh...er, I mean after the first period and before the third), but this one comes with more hostility. The Ducks hate the Sharks, the Sharks hate the Ducks, the fans hate each other, and the Kings are fine with it. So is the Battle of California. Expect a better effort tonight, because frankly, it can't get too much worse than what we saw (or didn't see, for you DirecTV customers) on Thursday.

GO SHARKS (I'll be in attendance for this one, 443 row A Teal Odgers jersey so a win would be sexyamazing)
-Jess

Opening Night Sharks @ Avalanche

After a summer of waiting that began way too early AGAIN, the day is finally here. The San Jose Sharks, revamped over the off-season, begin their journey that can't possibly end more disappointing than last year...can it?

For us SF Giants fans, today is poetic. The Giants were officially eliminated from playoff contention last night, effectively ending their season, and today the Sharks begin theirs, with a whole 82+ games to determine their own destiny. Well that all starts tonight, in a building that has seen a couple Sharks seasons end, the Pepsi Center.

The Avalanche aren't the same team of those days, as they come into the season with the third worst record last year. However, this year is a new year, with a clean slate to speak of, which also goes for the Sharks, despite winning the least important trophy in the NHL last year.

Basically, tonight begins another opportunity for the Teal to have a strong October, November, December, January, February, and March not end in a weak April and May.

Sharks @ Avalanche at 7 pacific time, on Versus, unless you have DirecTV, or are driving to Los Angeles so that you can go to the Sharks game on Saturday in Anaheim (like I'm doing, maybe I'll catch you there).

GO SHARKS (it begins here, and hopefully doesn't end until a long time from now)
-Jess

Catching up

Ok, so its been about 7 months, a gap that won't be kept up following this post.

Quick hits:
- The Teal won the Obama Trophy and were McCained in the opening round of the playoffs by that Disney team in the outskirts of LA.
- Changes were promised by then GM Doug Wilson (still GM, but was thought he might go).
- Despite countless rumors, absolutely nothing happening at the draft and during the free agency period (sorry Scott Nichol and Jed Ortmeyer).
- A couple weeks ago, ole Dougie decided to awake from his summer hibernation (something Canadians do) and make a call up to Vancouver, shipping away Christian Ehrhoff and Brad Lukowich for a couple of minor league schlubs in Patrick White and Daniel Rahimi. A lot of folks weren't fans of Ehrhoff, at least they won't be able to hate his replacement, who will struggle to crack the AHL lineup. A total salary dump, it was a precursor to this...
- TRADING FOR F*CKING DANY HEATLEY!
- ESPN reported a three team trade involving the Sharks, Senators, and Kings, sending Patrick Marleau to LA, Alexander Frolov and Jarret Stoll to Ottawa, and Heatley to SJ. It was quickly destroyed by all three GMs. Suck it John Buccigross.
- The next day, Heatley and a 5th rounder to SJ for Jonathan Cheechoo and Milan Michalek with a 2nd rounder tacked on.

Basically, the Sharks drastically improved their top 2 lines, with Heatley, a pure shooter, playing with Joe Thornton, a pure passer, full time. Marleau can roll on the second line, not too shabby.

The bottom six is looking a little hairy, with some mix of Jamie McGinn, Torrey Mitchell (might be hurt), Brad Staubitz, Scott Nichol, Jed Ortmeyer, Manny Malhotra (just signed to try out), and Dan Hinote. Definitely not as much scoring around, but defense/physicality looks to be up.

The defense lost its fastest blueliner in Ehrhoff and a grinder in Lukowich, and will need to replace both with guys who will win their spots in training camp. Boyle, Blake, Vlasic, Murray are the solid 4, with young stud Nick Petrecki, Kent Huskins, Mike Moore, and Derek Joslin looking to take those last two spaces.

Evgeni Nabokov returns in net, probably with Thomas Greiss backing him up. How much longer Nabby has the starting position remains to be seen, as his contract is up after this season and the Sharks young possible replacements need to prove themselves.

Last night was the Teal and White game, hopefully with no glaring grammatical embarrassments (Who's side are you on?), the Sharks open the preseason schedule tonight against the Kings in Ontario (Ontario, CA doesn't fully explain things, so let's go with Ontario, California).

GO SHARKS (HOCKEY IS BACK and so is the blog)
-Jess

2/9/09-2/13/09 sharks 5-2 and Boston

First, the city.

Many of you may know this, but Boston is a great sports town. Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and while I was here, college hockey as well. There's a ton of history in this town, a lot of it devoted to those teams, the rest of it devoted to this country. While here, I took trips to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox (1912), Union Oyster House, the oldest and first restaurant in America (1826), Bell in Hand Tavern, the first bar in America (1790) and the Old Massachusetts State House, the site of the reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Boston Massacre.

I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on Friend Street, right next door to the TD BankNorth Garden. A nice, new-ish hotel tucked in the block, my cab driver actually missed it on our first pass, and when he saw he had passed the address, he reversed about half a block to get me to the front door. There are a bunch of bars in Boston, by the Garden is no exception. While here, I stopped in at a few, most notably Boston Beer Works (brewer of a lot of beers, including the very tasty Chamomile Green and the Bunker Hill Blue-beery Ale, with actual Maine blueberries in it, also be sure to order the fried pickles) and my favorite stop of the trip, The Four's.

As I found out at the end of the trip, The Four's has been voted the #1 sports bar in America, and certainly doesn't disappoint. I visited this fine establishment on Monday night, where I watched the end of the 57th Beanpot, won by Boston University by a score of 5-2. I visited again Tuesday night after the Sharks game, where I was met with joking hostility by some of the guests, who were very kind. I was also there on Wednesday night to watch the Sharks take on the Penguins, when the manager was kind enough to put the Sharks game on 3 tvs for myself, another family of Sharks fans, and a group of Sharks fans from Southern Ontario. Great place with tons of history on the walls, dishes named for players, and tasty food too. Get the buffalo chicken nachos, they're tremendous.

Onto the game. At first glance, the TD BankNorth Garden is a huge gigantic building. Well, at second and third glance and every subsequent glance its still huge and gigantic, too. Once inside though, it becomes apparent why the building is so big. What you can't see from the outside of the Garden is that the bottom floor serves as a train station for Boston, with multiple Amtrak tracks taking people all over the northeast. To get to the Garden, one must go in the doors of the ground floor, and then go up, up, up.

Three stories up is the loge, or lower level seating area for the Garden. The concourse is kinda wide, with food on the inside spotted around the concourse. The seating area is much smaller than you are led to believe by looking at the exterior, only 17,565 can sit to watch a hockey game. The lower level is a checker board pattern of alternating black and gold seat backs, upstairs is just gold. A ton of banners hang from the rafters, half devoted to the Celtics, half to the Bruins.

The game itself was a tale of three periods, the first going to the Bruins, with two goals from who many believe is the second coming of Cam Neely, young Milan Lucic. The Sharks tallied once in the first, a Rob Blake shot that ricocheted off of Dennis Wideman's skate and past goalie Tim Thomas.

The second period was more of a toss up, as the Bruins began the period where they left off in the first. The game seemed to swing when the Sharks were able to kill 49 seconds of a two man advantage, and the rest of the other penalty as well. The Sharks still trailed 2-1 after 2, but the game was much closer after 40 minutes of play.

The third and final period of play was a great one for all of those who came to the arena in teal that night. Captain Patrick Marleau tied the game at 2 just a few minutes into the frame, Milan Michalek gave the Sharks a 3-2 lead just a couple minutes later, and Joe Thornton capped his return with a right-place-at-the-right-time goal, a deflection off his skate that completed a 3 goal in 6:16 span for the Sharks.

There were quite a few Sharks fans in the stands, and quite a few Thornton Bruins jerseys as well. He got a decent amount of boos every time he touched the puck, but at night's end he got the last laugh as the Sharks left with the two points.

The Sharks, and myself, will be in Buffalo tonight for a matchup with the Sabres (4:30 California time). Former Shark Craig Rivet wears the C for the Sabres, who are without leading goal scorer Thomas Vanek who is out with a broken jaw. These two teams met last year in San Jose, a 7-1 dismantling by the Sabres. I wouldn't mind seeing the road team do that again tonight.

GO SHARKS (Condolences to the families of everyone who was on Continental Airlines Flight #3407, a small plane that was to land in Buffalo late last night, but fatally crashed into a home just miles from the airport)

-Jess

2/7/09 COLUMBUS 3, sharks 2 (OT)

Its been a little while since we last spoke, I've been real busy with the Stealth and moving to SJSU and stuff, but I'm happy to say that I'm gonna get started blogging again. To the important part...


Dan LaCosta. Remember the name, fin fans, because, well, he's some young lucky schmuck who got to face the recently rolling downhill San Jose Sharks. After dropping down 2-0 after one, the Sharks scratched and clawed their way back to even, only to fall under in overtime to the Blue Jackets for the second time this year.

I didn't actually get to catch this one, as I was in San Francisco last night for the belated Chinese New Year parade, but lemme just say, wow, what a parade it was. Some hi-lites: A giant dragon that took somewhere close to 100 people to operate, a float with a swinging door that opened to reveal a cute little girl waving, only to have the door close every now and then, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom out of his parade vehicle walking around shaking hands, exchanging hugs, and performing marriages (one of those might not be right), and even a drum corps that stopped mid-march, rotated, and went half speed.

But back to the Sharks, their loss last night brings their losing streak to three, losing in all three possible ways (regulation, shootout, and overtime, respectively). Its the first three game losing streak all year, and it continues a sluggish patch for the Teal since the All-Star Break. The top line has just 6 points in 5 games since January 25th, Evgeni Nabokov has 2 shutouts, but 3 semi-sloppy games as well. The defense is still missing Brad Lukowich, but the play of Alexei Semenov (until last night) has been solid in his stead. JR is still out, Torrey Mitchell is still out, both look to be back by the end of the month hopefully.

Last night's Jackets game was the first of the annual Sharks February Mostly East Coast Road Trip (for the tennis tournament that takes place at HP), and it was just the tip of the frozen iceberg. Tuesday, the Sharks are in Boston to take on the East leading Bruins, Wednesday they take on the defending East champion Pittsburgh Penguins, Friday they're on the shores of Lake Freezeyfreeze in Buffalo to play the Sabres, and Sunday they match up for an afternoon affair in gloriously safe Newark with the New Jersey Devils.

For selfish reasons, hopefully the Sharks awake from their late January/beginning February slumber, as I will be in attendance for the matchups on Tuesday in Boston and Friday in Buffalo. That's right, the Odyssey is back in the saddle, (or the airplane as it were) for another couple games, this time in the beautiful weather of the NorthEast division. Unfortunately not all 5 cities are in a row, so I won't be able to do like last year, but I will be at a couple. If you will be there, feel free to contact me, I'd love to meet up with you for a beer or something while I'm over there.

I'll check in from frigid Boston tomorrow night, as I will do each night this week.

GO SHARKS (GO WARM)
-Jess

How they're doin

No Nabby, no Cheech, and up until last Sunday, no problem.

The Teal are clearly motivated to do something this year, because they're playing strong, 60 minute contests. They're hitting, forechecking, shooting, crashing the net, anything it is taking to win, they're doing the job. A quick recap of some highlights recently...

* The Boys in Teal took down both Cup finalists in the same week defeating the Penguins 2-1 and the Wings 4-2.
* A 7 game win streak was only snapped on Sunday with a loss in Phoenix
* Brian Boucher is 1-1 since taking over for the injured (unknown injury) Evgeni Nabokov.
* The Sharks are 9-0 at the HP Pavilion this year

Say what you will about this Sharks squad, but they clearly look like a different team. Games are no longer being won by sitting on leads for 30-40 minutes, they're being won with 60 minutes of pressure. Sure its still November, and the Sharks do have a history of finding themselves on top of the league until April/May when they head out on their annual golf trip only to return and start the whole thing over in September, but I like this team, and think that they could be on their way to something good this year.

Tonight the Sharks look to become only the third team in NHL history to start the season with 10 consecutive wins at home (the record is 11 by Chicago set in the 63/64 season) when they take on the Nashville Predators (7:30). To further pile on the jinx, the Sharks are 7-0-1 against the Predators in San Jose since 03/04. This year, Nashville is 1-6-1 away from home.

GO SHARKS (10?)
-Jess

Games 4-7

Anyone who has been following the Sharks recently knows three things: 1) The offense is pretty good, 2) the defense is iffy, and 3) us here at the Odyssey (me) haven't been doing a great job at keeping you up to date on all of that. But, just like the Sharks, business here is just beginning to pick up.

Over the past week, we've seen a 5-2 win over Columbus, a 4-0 loss to Anaheim, a 5-4 OT win over Philly, and a wild and woolly one (that's for you, Dan) over the Flyers 7-6 in a shootout on Tuesday.

So what do we know:

*Patrick Marleau is playing pretty well
*Joe looks hurt or something
*Devin Setoguchi has learned how to not disappear after one game
*Jonathan Cheechoo can score goals in the late months of a calendar year
*Rob Blake likes to shoot the puck
*Dan Boyle is everywhere
*Evgeni Nabokov looks kinda tired
*The season needs to end now so the Cup can just be awarded to the Sharks

Before the season began, people expected the Pacific to be tops in the league. Its only 3 weeks in, but that's not the case. After the Sharks, the rest of the division is floundering in mediocrity, with the next nearest team 5 points back (Dallas). I predicted a similar dominance for the PacDiv, but if it stays like this all year long, I'm not sure how much I'll mind.

Tonight the Teal play the second on their three game roadie when they invade the Ft. Lauderdale suburb of Sunrise to take on the Florida Panthers (4:30). The Panthers are 3-3 this year, and offer a balanced attack. With the trade of Olli Jokinen to Phoenix in the off-season, the Cats have turned to kids such as David Booth, Nathan Horton, and even Keith Ballard to provide the scoring. The last time the Sharks played the Panthers, they tricked the Cats into losing, and treated themselves to a late 2-1 win on Halloween night in 2006.

On a side note, tonight San Jose State University football plays what is probably their biggest game in the last few years when they host #13 Boise State tonight at Spartan Stadium (6:00). Each year for the last few, the Spartans have had a chance to make a dent in the BCS standings, coming close to upsets over Boise in 2006 and Hawaii last year, but falling just short. However this year carries more significance, as this season sees SJSU poised for a shot at the WAC crown. The spread is set at just 7, and should SJSU pull off the win tonight, there will be a great deal of partying at 1257 S. 10th. For those of you looking to watch some of both local events tonight, the football game can be seen on ESPN2 live.

GO SHARKS (GO SPARTANS TOO)
-Jess