You know things are down in Hockeytown when Joe Louis Arena doesn't fill up for a semifinal game. But don't tell that to this fan. Dave Sandford/Getty Images

DETROIT -- After Mike Grier scored midway through the first period to give the San Jose Sharks a 2-0 lead -- a lead that would hold up -- in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock called a timeout to settled his team.

After 30 seconds, play officially resumed.

Next time, somebody should have informed the Sharks and reminded the Red Wings.

The tedium was the message, a waltz of uninspired hockey between two of the NHL's most dynamic teams. While hardly playing ideally, San Jose wound up playing what amounted to the ideal road game, blocking 18 shots (five by Kyle McLaren) to one for Detroit, keeping the Wings scoring chances to the outside (after Pavel Datsyuk overhandled a point-blank opportunity six minutes in), putting a super line of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Bill Guerin together late in the second period but quickly abandoning the project, not taking penalties in the third period after killing off three in succession in the second period and generally sucking the oxygen out of Joe Louis Arena, which has been the most rollicking of hockey barns for the past decade but could have been mistaken for the Detroit Public Library at times Thursday night.

San Jose had eight shots in the first 10:09 of the game. During the next 50 minutes or so, San Jose managed only 11 more. But as Sharks coach Ron Wilson sagely noted, most of the quality chances that the Sharks did allow came early in the game. The fast and furious start by both teams -- Thornton made a sweet diagonal pass from the goal line to defenseman Matt Carle for the first goal on San Jose's lone power play and a hard forecheck by Grier on Wings defenseman Mathieu Schneider that gave Grier the opportunity for the second goal, just 24 seconds later -- soon gave way to a labor-intensive exercise that produced little in the way of concrete results.

"That was not how we want to play," Sharks defenseman Craig Rivet said. "We had far too many turnovers against the team that has one of the best transition games. You know, we were almost trying to beat ourselves with sloppy play. We're a team that likes to get the puck deep, have puck protection and wear them down. That's pretty much what they did to us tonight. We didn't play too much in the other team's zone. Even though we shut them out, we can't say this is a game we're really happy with."

The key numbers were the 18 blocked shots and the 18,712 fans, until the ennui of the third period prodded many of them to the exits with five minutes remaining. Joe Louis Arena holds 20,066 although the stretches of empty seats made the crowd seem mildly optimistic. Was this Hockeytown or some Potemkin Village, a façade of a puck city that, at least since Scotty Bowman took over the team in the 1990s, seemed like it could not get enough of the sport. The last time the arena seemed this moribund was when Steve Yzerman was barely old enough to shave. Of course, there were no-shows in the stands during the regular season, but unsold tickets and a game presentation Thursday that failed to match the originality and passion that has come to be associated with the Red Wings truly was shocking.

"That was something I wasn't expecting," Rivet said. "I looked up in the stands and there was a lot of empty seats there. That's really uncharacteristic of Detroit."

The problem is a downturn in the local economy and an upturn in the fortunes of the Tigers, Wings owner Mike Ilitch's other big sports property. Detroit's surprising appearance in the World Series in 2006 became an economic drain on the Wings, who are just another competitor for the sports entertainment dollar here. Without being able to ice a lineup of Hall of Fame players circa 1997 and 1998 due to the constraints of a salary cap, some of the Red Wings glitz is gone. Not that the place is about to become the Meadowlands of Michigan, but if Hockeytown wavers, the NHL must be concerned about traditionally softer markets.

But enough about soft markets. Game 1 was about a soft game. On Saturday afternoon, the Sharks should have their legs and the Red Wings should have their edge. The timeout better be over.