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Confidence Contagious In Shark Land 2/11/08
While there is a lot of clean up still needed by the San Jose Sharks, there is one thing that is definitely in their corner. It is something that is crucial to the success of any team and that is confidence. The origin of this self-assured attitude steams off the shoulders of goalie Evgeni Nabokov who unquestionably is one of the best, if not the best goal tender in the NHL right now. Is the Vezina Trophy in his future? He did win the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie goalie in 2001. His record of 29-17-6 currently stands as the best in the league. Saturday night, the Sharks took on the Nashville Predators at HP Pavilion. They have outscored Nashville 8-2; winning both games they have played this season. Nashville came in on an overtime loss to Tampa Bay while San Jose followed a win Friday night over the Blue Jackets The Sharks drew first blood when at 4:48, #14 Jonathan Cheechoo (his 12th of the season) scored assisted by #19 Joe Thornton (48th assist) and #9 Milan Michalek (17th assist). At 7:00 Nashville drew even off the stick of #38 Vernon Fiddler, assisted by #23 Martin Gelinas and #5 Greg Zanon. The first period came to an end deadlocked at 1-1. The second period saw the early departure of #12 Captain Patrick Marleau due to a groin injury, a real blow to San Jose. (It was later learned that Marleau was not expected to miss any time despite a very sore groin.) Soon after Marleau’s exodus, Nashville took the lead when Vernon Fiddler scored his second goal of the evening on the power play. He was assisted by #14 Radek Bonk and #2 Dan Hamhuis. Momentum shifted in favor of the Predators with San Jose fighting to claim control. Once again it was #14 Jonathan Cheechoo who took that control back, scoring his second goal of the game, his 13th of the season, to tie the game up. He was assisted by #44 Marc- Edouard Vlasic (6th assist) and #19 Joe Thornton (49th assist), and the game was once again tied. As the second period came to an end, San Jose had taken 17 shots on goal to Nashville’s 8. The score remained tied at 2. With one period left in the game, the task facing the Sharks was one of getting their lines not only skating faster but also working as one unit tripping up the pressure that Nashville was bringing at times during the first two periods. The third period turned into a heated affair with both teams picking up the pace, especially the Sharks first line. San Jose’s ace Joe Thornton and Nashville’s Dan Hamhuis got into a discussion that sent both of them into the penalty box for a two-minute sit-down for roughing. One minute into that penalty, #9 Milan Michalek (9th goal of the season) broke the tie assisted by #14 Jonathan Cheechoo and #44 Marc-Edouard Vlasic and San Jose took the lead 3-2. The Nashville Predators fought back scoring for a third time and the game seemed to be headed into a possible overtime. During the break after the second period, one of my co-workers Misha asked me who would win the game for the Sharks and I said without hesitation Cheechoo with his first hat trick of the season. Not that I am any sort of expert, in fact, this was an easy call since Cheechoo has been on fire the past eleven games, scoring in nine of them. When overtime seemed a definite possibility, #14 scored his 14th goal of the season and hats flew to the ice celebrating Cheechoo’s 3rd goal of the game and the 4-3 lead, which turned out to be the final. This turned out to be a night of much celebration. There was the win for San Jose, the 500th career win for coach Ron Wilson, Jeremy Roenick playing in his 1300th career NHL game, and Joe Thornton taking the league lead in assists. It just doesn’t get any better than that, and to do it all at home is absolute icing on the cake. All the chitchat about the Sharks being unable to win at home has been put to bed, hopefully for the season and beyond. “I saw Joe hit and everybody collapses on him, so knew I was going to the point and I just wanted to get a screen and get a stick on it,” said Cheechoo of his hat trick goal. He has admittedly been playing much-improved hockey since Christmas and this late season surge is vitally important to San Jose. “I’m glad we got the two points. It wasn’t pretty but we competed really hard. We don’t have our A game right now for some reason but we got the job done,” said Coach Ron Wilson after the game. “Cheech is starting to catch fire. He has been going into the dirty places and working hard and he is finally starting to get the rewards. He gets hot all the time at this time of the year and that’s a good sign for us,” he said. Wilson spoke about the milestone that he reached in Saturday night’s game. “Who’d have ever thought that I would have 500 wins or even coach 1,000 games in the league,” said Wilson. “Those are pretty neat kind of things that you look back on more when you are done. Of the five hundred, I probably had to sweat hard in 400 of them. In this league not a lot of victories come easy. You have great players that you coach along the way. I can’t give enough credit to the assistants that I have,” he said. So this night of celebration came to an end. The San Jose Sharks have no time to dwell on any of it as they look ahead to Tuesday evening and their game against the Flames followed by another home game against the Oilers on Thursday night. The puck drops at 7:30 in both contests. Contact: Bay Area Sports Drive (BASD)
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By Barbara Mason Bay Area Sports Drive/Raiderdrive.com