One down, three to go

By Mark Purdy
Mercury News Sports Columnist

Article Launched: 04/30/2008 10:25:28 PM PDT


DALLAS - Shift by shift. Period by period. When a hockey team is digging out of a big hole, the shovel loads have to be small. The bites must be tiny. The progress must be incremental.
The Sharks were dynamically incremental Wednesday night. That's how it must be from this point, as long as they are still playing. But at least they are still playing. After a mandatory 2-1 victory over Dallas, they are still playing. They are behind three victories to one. But they are still playing.

"A lot of people thought we were going to lose tonight," said Joe Thornton, who emerged from a three-game fog of frustration and hit some people and assisted on the winning goal. "But the 20 guys in this room had faith. We still want to make a series out of this."

That can happen after one more Shark victory, which must happen Friday night at HP Pavilion. One more victory, and you can say it is a series again. Wednesday night was simply about sweep avoidance.

Give props to the Sharks for that, though. Playing just 24 hours after the second crushing overtime loss in three games, skating with sore bodies and exhausted brains, the Sharks played their smartest and best game of the series.

Of course, some of this was surely the result of Dallas lacking as much urgency. But the Sharks still had to bear down, shift by shift, in a tough environment where many fans entered the building with brooms in hand.

Most impressively, the Sharks also had to overcome a dumb mistake in the second period by rookie Devin Setoguchi. Behind the net, trying to move the puck out of his own end, Setoguchi responded to the relentlessly impressive Dallas defensive pressure--a constant theme of the series--by throwing the puck directly onto the stick of Stars winger Jere Lehtinen. He was standing right in front Shark goalie Evgeni Nabokov, who had no chance.

Half a second later, Dallas took a 1-0 lead. And the Sharks had a choice. About 34 minutes of regulation hockey remained in their season, potentially. So would our beloved Los Tiburones claw back with every muscle and shovel hard, shift by shift? Or would they try pretty darn hard and settle for the almost-inevitable series loss?

They clawed.

"For us to get back in this, we're going to face challenges like that," said defenseman Brian Campbell."It's not going to be smooth . . . Those two overtime games were tough. But we have a lot of confidence going ahead in this room."

They also had one other thought in their minds. Being swept would not just have been eliminating and final for the Sharks. It would have been embarrassing and disgusting for a team that had the NHL's second best record this season. And for the citizens of San Jose, it would have been the shame of a great urban/suburban mongrel municipality.

For Patrick Marleau, it also would have been unfair. At least on this night. The Sharks' captain has taken some rightful heat for his little hippity-hop avoidance of a power play shot in Game 1 that turned into a crucial Dallas goal. But for the back-to-back nights here at American Airlines Center, he was the Sharks' best player.

Roughly four minutes after the Setoguchi goof, Marleau put his team back in the game by turning a Dallas power play into a shorthanded Shark goal, his second in two games. There was some luck involved, with Dallas making a lazy pass. Marleau still had to jump on the puck and bury it. Which he did.

"We've got to catch the breaks," Marleau admitted, "but we've got to work for them."

Now, the Sharks need Thornton to catch some breaks of his own. He played 43 minutes over the two nights here. He has been out of sync the whole series, but not because he hasn't been trying hard. To the contrary. Dallas is using Thornton's stubborn desire to be a factor against him.

In the regular season, Thornton is a master at holding onto the puck and waiting for passing lanes to open. He likes to slow down the game that way -- and he obviously makes it work. But in the playoffs when everything speeds up and skilled teams such as Dallas collapse faster to close space, Thornton often still tries to keep it slow -- which makes the defenders' jobs easier. Thornton has finally started to adjust and move the puck a bit quicker. His assist on the winning goal was swift stab to the crease, where Michalek got his stick on the puck and scored.

"I was just moving my feet a little more tonight," Thornton said. "Usually, good things happen when I move. So I've got to keep doing that."

And what next?

"The key," said Shark winger Ryane Clowe before the game, "is getting a win and seeing how they respond."

They got the win. How will Dallas respond.

"We've got our confidence," Michalek said. "They're going to be nervous. So it's great for us."

"We didn't sit back," Thornton added. "We played like a desperate team tonight. You want to live to see another day. We just want to keep the momentum going. We need to win. We need to win."

To do that, they need to keep shoveling. Shift by shift. Friday night, they will at least have a chance to do that.