Friday, May 02, 2008

4/30/08 WCSF #4: sharks 2, DALLAS 1

Yeah, your stereotypical Sharks elimination game, they show up until they get scored on, then fold up and prepare for the sum... say what? They didn't lose? Well, hey, that's cool.

The Sharks staved off elimination last night, something they're gonna have to do a few more times if they want to move on to the next round of the playoffs. Patrick Marleau recieved a great breakout pass from Sergei Zubov again, and buried a shorthanded breakaway on Marty Turco, Milan Michalek shoved in his third goal of the series on the power play, and Evgeni Nabokov had his strongest game of the series, and possibly of the playoffs, making 17 saves in the win, and the Sharks live to play another day.

The win came on the second night of a back to back in Dallas, caused by the expectation that there would have been a Dallas Mavericks playoff game tonight, but they were eliminated by New Orleans last night. The win gives the Sharks a shred of hope that this isn't quite over yet, and plants that same thought, albeit in the form of doubt, into the heads of the Dallas Stars. As Jamie Baker said eloquently after Game 4, a seed has been planted, and in Game 5, the Sharks need to do in their power to make that seed grow.

Tomorrow hopefully comes some water and sunshine for that seed, when Game 5 faces off at 7 pacific at HP. With Detroit completing their sweep of the Colorado Avalanche tonight, the Sharks can hope that Dallas has been guilty of scoreboard watching and premature scouting, something that can plague a team that is steamrolling the opposition mercilessly. On the other side of things, a possible date with Detroit could have some Sharks licking their lips, thinking a possible revenge could await them in the next round.

Unfortunately, one game does not make the series, and the Sharks aren't close to that revenge yet, but a win tomorrow night will get them that much closer. As of now, there is no Game 6 or Game 7 that the Sharks can even think about, because if they don't win Game 5, then neither of those will ever exist. However, there are ways to make another trip to Dallas necessary: More solid goaltending from Nabby, a continued presence from guys like Mike Grier, Tomas Plihal, Torrey Mitchell, and Devin Setoguchi up front, and solid, pressure from the middle outwards defense, and an extended visit from the special teams, and we could very well be talking about Sunday soon enough.

GO SHARKS (win again)
-Jess

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