Rabbit Style News

The Sharks lost halfway through quadruple overtime. Both teams’ goalies were stellar throughout the entire game, and the Sharks dominated much of the overtime periods. Somebody had to score eventually, and unfortunately it turned out to be the Stars. For those of you not familiar with playoff hockey, the regulation play was 60 minutes. Then 20-minute breaks alternated with 20-minute periods of sudden death play, so the game-winning goal at 9:03 of the fourth overtime meant that they had played 129 minutes of hockey. That’s one full game, followed by a second full game, and then 9 more minutes into a third. In real time it lasted a numbing 5 hours, 14 minutes from first face-off to final goal.

It seems like the Sharks should have won, especially with much of their dominating, intense play in the overtimes, and yet they couldn’t solve Marty Turco. The Stars goalie stopped shot after shot, ending with a franchise-record 61saves.   Nabokov saved 53 for the Sharks.

So it’s over. The Sharks have really been eliminated from the playoffs, and all the analysts who last fall picked the Sharks to win the Cup will get to talk about what went wrong. It’s likely that the coach will be let go and the player roster changed.

It could have so easily gone the other way to force a final game 7 in San Jose on Tuesday, and it didn’t. I’m sad for the players. I hope the Stars go on to win the Stanley Cup, so that at least the Sharks will know they lost to the champions.

I opened my eyes at 9:43 this morning and was surprised to find that I was awake and ready to start the day, even though it’s Saturday and I usually sleep until around 1 o’clock, sometimes later.  I made pancakes and enjoyed a few extra hours in my waking day.

In other news, the Sharks won last night’s game in overtime, becoming just the 10th team to force a game 6 in the 151 NHL series that started 3-0.   They were down 2-0 going into the third period, providing their fans at the Shark Tank — and sports bars in Arizona — a thrilling come-from-behind victory.  Next game is in Dallas tomorrow evening.