SF Examiner: Despite success, Sharks still get lost in Bay Area sports scene

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

This has always been the problem with hockey in California: A kid can’t go onto the playground, into the street or out in his backyard and play.

It is no exaggeration to point out around here that a surfing competition, Mavericks, receives more attention than a skating competition, the Stanley Cup.

One then is caught between fear and favor when even mentioning these words: San Jose Sharks.

The Sharks clearly are the best-run sports franchise in the Bay Area, a region where unfortunately front-office dysfunction is practically universal with perhaps another exception, the Giants.

The Sharks, indeed, are the only team in the last year in any sport with a winning record. This season they even had the most victories in the NHL, gaining something known as the Presidents’ Cup.

Yet the Sharks remain a virtual rumor except to the hockey cognoscenti, an intense, but miniscule group.

When the KNBR (680 AM) guy, Gary Radnich, is advised a caller to the program is “a hockey fan,” his immediate testing response is: “Name five players on the Sharks.”

If that is a sad commentary on our lack of sporting insight, well, we’re still musing about Joe Montana a decade and a half after his departure, but we remain clueless about another Joe — Joe Thornton — arguably the Sharks’ best player.

The Sharks sell out every game, or near enough to it, so nobody can be accused of distorting the truth when saying HP Pavilion is filled. But is anybody interested beyond the same 17,000-plus that attend?

And are the Sharks hurt as much by their locale as by their sport?

This is not a knock against San Jose, the most populous city north of Los Angeles. But what if the Sharks played in San Francisco, where they began? Would there be greater cachet? Undeniably there would be greater access for those in The City or Oakland or Marin.

The hockey crowd is wonderfully fanatical. The noise created when the Sharks score a goal will vibrate your eyeballs. It outdoes the roads from Warriors fans in the short-lived playoff of two years past or Giants rooters when Barry Bonds was driving balls into the stands.

Still, north of San Carlos, the team and the game seem more afterthought than necessity.

You hear people arguing about the Niners and Raiders draft picks, complaining because the Giants can’t get a big bat. But you don’t hear anyone, on air at least, discussing the Sharks.

The antidote surely would be for the Sharks to reach the Stanley Cup finals for once. Nobody jumps on bandwagons with the alacrity displayed by the fickle folk in this region who haven’t had a championship in any sport for years.

No playoffs recently for the Giants, A’s, Niners, Raiders or Warriors? Hey, Martha, what do they call that little black rubber thing people hit with sticks, and what is icing anyway?

The Sharks, however, lost the first two games of their current best-of-seven playoff series against Anaheim. Instead of becoming saviors for their sport in this land of milk, honey and growing unemployment, they seemed destined to be part of continuing parade of failures.

Just like the other teams in the Bay Area, except with less recognition.

Art Spander has been covering Bay Area sports since 1965 and also writes on www.artspander.com and www.realclearsports.com. E-mail him at typoes@aol.com.

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Sharks in denial and in a hole after another loss

SAN JOSE – This is Sharks Territory. That’s what the signs tell us.

That’s what these playoffs tell us. Down here in San Jose, life and hockey would be so much better if there weren’t any postseason. Which, if the Sharks don’t begin to get some results, there won’t be in a short while.

Remember the way the Warriors stunned the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs a couple of years ago? What’s happened to the Sharks is the reverse. They have become the stunees.

“Ask them,’’ San Jose coach Todd McLellan said of his group, “and I think they’ll tell you they’re the better team. It’s not like we’ve been spanked.’’

No, but they’ve been beaten. Twice. At home in front of sellout crowds whose anticipation turned to dismay, whose shouts turned into boos.

The Sharks finally scored Sunday night. After 85 minutes and 35 seconds of not scoring. This time they were beaten by the Anaheim Ducks, 3-2, which aesthetically may be more acceptable than losing 2-0, as happened Thursday night.

San Jose had the best regular-season record in the NHL. And at the moment a tie for the worst current postseason record. It’s a recurring nightmare for the Sharks, who lure everyone into thinking this may be the year and then go out and trip over their own intentions.

The Sharks are 0-for-12 on the power play, equally dividing their failings with six each game. Twelve different times they’ve had a man advantage, and 12 different times they’ve been unable to score. You don’t have to have been born in Canada to understand that’s not very good.

“They’re beating us to the puck,’’ said the Sharks captain, Patty Marleau. The result is that Anaheim, known for physical play rather than success, has a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference quarterfinals.

And so San Jose players are firing clichés faster and harder than apparently they have the puck.

“Again,’’ said San Jose’s Joe Thornton, “I thought we controlled the game.’’

If he means hitting the puck, indeed. San Jose had 44 shots on goal, compared to 26 for Anaheim. If he means getting the puck past the goalie, absolutely not. You can persuade yourself that you’re doing a great job, but in sports the only thing that matters is who wins.

And in two games, the Sharks haven’t won any.

They shook up their lines. They were more aggressive. The first game the Sharks’ Jeremy Roenick described as a chess match.

This one was a hockey match, with plenty of banging and shoving. It was great theater. But it wasn’t satisfying for the 17,496 fans whose noise level ebbed in the final minutes. Except for the boos.

“Sometimes,’’ said Randy Carlyle, the Ducks coach, “it is more important to prevent a goal than score a goal in these tight games.’’ That’s the quintessential philosophy in the four major team sports. Defense beats offense. Keep the other guy from getting goals, baskets, runs or touchdowns.

The Giants won a couple of games over the weekend from the Arizona Diamondbacks because in those games the D-backs were shutout. In these games, the Sharks were shut down.

“The penalty kill is what they do,’’ said McLellen of Anaheim. “It’s very effective. We got to find a way to score, and that’s our biggest concern.’’

Anaheim’s young Swiss goalie, Jonas Hiller, has been brilliant. He stopped all 35 Sharks shots on Thursday night and 42 of the 44 Sunday night.

“There’s no magic to all this,’’ said the Sharks veteran Claude Lemieux. “You just have to get the puck into the net.’’

They understand the problem. Now they must go about correcting it.