Post Game Recap: No Castaways Here

We're going to do something crazy here and criticize last night's game. Sure, a win's and win and I am damn happy for it, but it wasn't exactly the Sharks most stellar outing. We think that deserves a little bit of attention.

Mina and I have seen a fair amount of games together, and we both came to the conclusion that if last night's game wasn't the worst game we have been to, it was solidly in our top three. The others being a terribly boring and slow Sharks v Columbus game that saw my husband and a friend nearly be driven insane by boredom (it was their first hockey game. Neither ever came back), and a game against Nashville where another friend literally fell asleep during the game. It was so bad, I think only the last 5 minutes of the game were worth watching. Last night's game was much like these in the sense that it was very slow, incredibly sloppy, and utterly absurd. The only thing it was missing was our friend falling asleep midway through.

Coming into last night's game the Shark shad 14 points, while the Islanders had 10. Despite this fact, it was very clear who the better team should have been and who was going to run the other one over and make them look like a peewee club. Sadly, the Sharks did this thing that they used to do a lot, but haven't done in awhile, which is to play down to the level of the team they are facing. I assume they do this to be polite, but they really don't need to be. This is about scoring more goals than the other guys, and if you have to embarrass them a little in the process, so be it. It's not like it never goes the other way for the Sharks. (and I can pretty much guarantee you the Flames don't feel bad about that game) The Sharks did a really good job of making the Islanders look good, which, for a club that was coming in on an 8 game losing streak, must have been nice. Still, if was frustrating for us, the fans, who had to sit there and watch 3 periods of guys falling down for no reason and consistently turning the puck over at the blue line or right in front of Niitty. There were so many icings in a row, I lost count. At one point, the crowd went nuts because Roloson (who is always annoyingly good against the Sharks, tossed the puck in the air and batted it down the ice with his stick AFTER making a save. That's how bad the play was. Roloson had enough time to do that and it got the crowd going. Dang, son. That ain't right.

This is not to say that the Sharks didn't get scoring chances, they did. Some really good ones early on too, but Roloson had his force field up and nothing was getting in behind him. The Sharks clearly were not playing up to par last night, and while they got the win, we weren't entirely certain they deserved it.

That goal they waved off was ridiculous. Incidental goalie contact and you wave the goal off. What-ever.

There were also a few icing calls that weren't actually icing. Mina and I begin wondering which rule book the refs had been reading.

I don't really bother me that the Isles scored the first goal, I pretty much saw that coming when the Sharks started letting their game fall apart. What bothers me is that the Sharks even gave them that chance.

Tavares got spun around by a Shark last night not named Murray. That was amazing.

A few times the Islanders just fell down. The Sharks did a few times as well. For once (plank) the ice did look terrible, despite it being cold enough to see one's breath inside the Tank last night.

We were both shocked that there was no news given on Husky Huskins last night after he took a puck off the ankle. The Sharks were clearly skating with only 5 Dmen, but apparently no one on tv covered that.
(Working the Corners has an update on him here)

Another prime example of just how bad last night's game was; people were more interested in looking for the origin of the falling balloons that kept making there way to the ice rather than watch the game. Ouch.

After giggling over how Big Mike Cvik loomed over his fellow zebras last night, we came up with his "origin" story and why he seems to hate the Sharks so much. I hope to make that into story book form for you all this season. Good excuse to bust out my newly learned flash skills.