Popular films a motivational tool for Sharks' Wilson

	Like Will Ferrell's Ricky Bobby, the Sharks pride themselves on being a 'winning machine,' and may have a Cup to show for it. Suzanne Hanover/Columbia
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DETROIT -- Evgeni Nabokov, a goalie blessed with more style than silliness, was awarded the coveted Wonder Bread cap by his fellow San Jose Sharks after Thursday's Game 1 shutout against Detroit, but his innate sense of propriety wouldn't allow him to parade around the dressing room in the player-of-the game prize, a Ron Wilson gimmick that the coach affectionately ripped from the big screen Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

What, you thought Wilson was going to borrow motivation for his group of 20- and 30-year-olds from the hallowed works of Bergman or Truffaut?

(The 400 Blows -- isn't that what the Anaheim Ducks use?)

Anyway, Wilson -- one part Scotty Bowman, one part Pauline Kael -- makes no apologies that he is a Will Ferrell guy. Last season, he appropriated the scene from The Wedding Crashers -- yeah, we know, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn, but Ferrell had the great cameo near the end when the old wedding crasher screams something to his mother about putting meat loaf on the table.

In training camp this season, Wilson switched to Talladega Nights and Ferrell's oft-quoted statement that, according to the coach, goes: "'I'm a great big hairy American winning machine and I wake up in the morning and piss excellence.'

Said Wilson: "We turned it into 'We're a big hairy winning machine' -- can't say American winning machine -- 'and when we wake up in the morning, we piss excellence.'" (Does the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances program know about this?)

Indeed, on the backs of T-shirts that the Sharks handed out are the letters WPE, an inside joke. If it is too wordy to put a saying on a T-shirt, it is going to be lost on a lot of players. The latest Sharks T-shirts have been emblazoned with a saying from Blades of Glory, a newer Ferrell release. These read: "If you can dream it, you can do it" -- so apt for what could be a two-month slog towards the Stanley Cup.

"Our guys thought that movie was really funny," Wilson said. "You just try to have fun, especially as you move along and things get more serious and pressure. You've got to be able to laugh about what you're doing a little bit."