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When the Sharks bite! San Jose completes upset of Blues
Posted: Monday May 08, 2000 09:10 PM
By Al Strachan, SLAM! Sports ST. LOUIS -- The San Jose Sharks franchise, which has no claim to fame other than an ability to stage occasional stunning seven-game playoff upsets, have done it again. This time, the victims were the St. Louis Blues, the best team in the National Hockey League this season. But the Sharks' 3-1 victory last night dashed the Blues' hopes of a Stanley Cup, as well as the city's hopes of a twin championship to go with the Rams' Super Bowl triumph. The win gave the Sharks the best-of-seven Western Conference quarter-final four games to three. There was no injustice in the result. The Sharks came out with a perfect game plan, followed it to the letter and, over the course of the evening, were by far the better team. Goaltender Steve Shields rebounded from a Game 6 in which he couldn't stop a suitcase and was named the first star. Captain Owen Nolan played a magnificent game in both ends of the ice and should have been named first star. And the rest of the Sharks did what they do so well. They mucked, they hacked. They took the hits to make the play and, in the process, they clawed out a victory.
"This team has a lot of character," said Mike Ricci, the prototypical Shark. "Just to play with these guys is a treat. "We slipped a little bit in the third period but (the Blues) didn't get where they did without being a good team. We really felt that we could beat this team and win the series. It took everybody, but we did it." The general idea was to play a zone-to-zone game. Get it over one line, then worry about the next one, and so on. Perhaps most importantly, the Sharks -- who go on to face the Dallas Stars in Round 2 -- made the Blues pay a price every time they touched the puck. There were to be no freebies, and the Sharks got that message across repeatedly. In games like this, the visiting team comes in with the idea of weathering the mandatory 10-minute opening storm and trying to go from there. But at the end of those 10 minutes, the Sharks had more than survived. They had taken a 1-0 lead. In fact, they took that lead before the game was three minutes old. They were buzzing around behind the net when a shot hit the boards and caromed to Ron Stern who shoved it in the general direction of the goal line. Blues goalie Roman Turek, who had moved out of position on the original shot, came sliding back, only to have the puck deflect off his glove and into the net. Turek didn't look particularly good on that goal, but he looked a lot worse on the next one -- a devastating goal to the Blues. Nolan stepped over the red line, took a stride and blasted a shot that, if left alone, would have sailed over the net. But Turek tried to grab it, fumbled it, and deflected it into the net. A bad goal like that always has a debilitating effect on a team. So does a goal in the dying moments of a period. Coming with 11 seconds left in the period, this was both. "I felt really bad for the guy," Shields said. "You don't know how hard it is to stop those shots when you have time to think about it. You have to get your body in front of it and he didn't, but I don't think that was the difference in the game." Not everyone agreed. "Owen's goal got us pumped up and got us settled down at the same time," said Vincent Damphousse who played a strong game. "It kept us going through the second and we got in a little trouble in the third period, but we worked out of it. We played really well in our own end all game and I think that was the difference. "Steve Shields showed a lot of character. That was a ballsy performance." Jeff Friesen put the Sharks up 3-0 when he and Niklas Sundstrom combined for the ugliest two-on-nobody break hockey fans have witnessed for some time. Friesen partially fanned on the original shot, fanned again, then finally slammed the puck into the net, but it spelled the end of the season for the Blues, even though they did narrow the gap on Scott Young's third-period goal. By pulling off the upset, the Sharks did the Stars a significant favour. Now, instead of having to play the rested Colorado Avalanche in the rarefied air of Denver, the Stars get to face the bedraggled Sharks. At the same time, the Detroit Red Wings are forced to take on Colorado. By the time the playoffs wind down, it may be transpire that the Sharks ended up playing a major role in deciding the Stanley Cup winner. There are four genuine contenders in the West -- the Sharks knocked off one, while determining which two of the other three had to go head to head. But that was far from their thoughts last night. They had done what they came to do -- pull off another seven-game first-round upset.
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