Sharks Go Down Fighting

Ray Ratto

San Francisco Chronicle

Monday, May 5, 2008


(05-05) 04:00 PDT Dallas -- For the third year running, the San Jose Sharks proudly could claim that they were the fifth-longest-lasting team in the National Hockey League. Not that they would, mind you. This last-quarterfinalist-standing thing is starting to get on people's nerves.

This time, though, the sting might take awhile to be felt. They did, after all, extend the Dallas Stars to the equivalent of seven games before going down.

Sunday night's 2-1 quadruple-overtime loss to Dallas here, in the longest game in Sharks history, insured that the Sharks' season ended as the last two have, with the organization and its 17,496 devoted worshipers wondering if their boys had been beaten by yet another better team, or if they'd merely given away too much too early for their late-series valor to be rewarded.

Either way, even though those nagging character arguments probably have been quelled for a while by their performance Sunday night and Monday morning, the sting of having been eliminated will last deep into the month, with plenty of as yet unspecified ramifications to come.

Presumably after a respectful period to allow everyone to rehydrate.

The winning goal came at 9:03 of the fourth overtime, with San Jose defenseman Brian Campbell in the penalty box for tripping Loui Eriksson. Brenden Morrow camped about 12 feet to the right of San Jose goalie Evgeni Nabokov and deflected a Stephane Robidas pass past Nabokov on Dallas' 55th shot of the night. Robidas had taken a cross-ice pass from Mike Ribeiro and directed the puck smartly toward Morrow, who needed no time to finish the job that had begun five and half hours earlier.

The game was a classic in Sharks' history, serving as proof that the Sharks are made of sterner stuff than at first believed after going down 3-0 in this series, but that reputation comes at a bitter cost, given the Sharks' recent run of playoff exits. That part of the story will be addressed in due time.

"We can't say we didn't have our chances, but their guy (Stars goalie Marty Turco) came up big a couple of times, but we definitely thought this was possible," the Sharks' Patrick Marleau said. "We definitely thought we could win (this series)."

The entire game looked and felt different than the other five, largely because it was played at a faster tempo and possession time and scoring chances between the two sides were closer to an even split. It looked, indeed, like a big game between equals that went so late into the night because both teams were desperate to end it before the start of tomorrow.

The Stars started quicker, either because they were unhappy that they still had to do this thing with the Sharks, unhappy that their will was being questioned, or because an 8 p.m. CDT Sunday game is no way to prepare for either Game 7 in San Jose or Game 1 in Detroit, the Stars came out in quite the bad mood. They pressured the Sharks from the start, hitting them as they had been hit in previous games. Steve Ott, the team's designated opponent's bone spur, even took a headlong run at Milan Michalek after losing his helmet. True, he missed by 2 feet, but the thought was there.

Soon enough, though, the game settled into a frenetic but even fight between obvious, and obviously weary, equals. The Sharks put more dangerous chances into play against Turco, and that imbalance grew as the game extended itself, but Turco was brilliant yet again, slightly more brilliant than Nabokov. Indeed, the two goals in regulation - by Antti Miettinen at 4:49 of the second period, and Ryane Clowe 1:39 into the third - were caused not by goaltender malfeasance but by poor defensive plays.

Thus, the difference between Turco and Nabokov was not so pronounced that one freely could choose one rather than the other. Indeed, as the game ground on, it fell into a familiar overtime pattern - lots of urgency and minimal artistry.

San Jose, in fact, did more with less after losing Michalek near the end of regulation to a crushing but legal shoulder-to-shoulder collision with Morrow.

Morrow, forechecking along the wall near the left face-off circle, hit the unaware Michalek hard enough to snap the Shark's head back violently and knock him to the ice, and he remained down through the end of the period and for several minutes thereafter before being helped unsteadily to his feet by trainer Ray Tufts and equipment manager Mike Aldrich and taken down the Stars' tunnel. He did not return, and the Sharks played with 11 forwards the rest of the way.

The series nearly ended 1:31 into the extra period when Nabokov brilliantly snared a Brad Richards shot from a right-side angle. There was some question whether Nabokov's glove was inside the goal cage, but replays clearly showed the call was correct.

Dallas maintained early pressure through the first six minutes, but Nabokov made several strong saves to maintain the Sharks' place until San Jose was able to normalize the balance of play again. Indeed, the Sharks nearly won the game when Marleau got a point-blank drive from a left-side angle at 11:58 that Turco slid across to parry.

The rest of the overtime periods were given to superb goaltending displays at both ends, as the Sharks and Stars took increasingly desperate chances to end the game before a second extra period. Ribeiro had the two best chances, both near the end of the first overtime, first getting robbed by Nabokov after taking a bad clearance pass by Campbell with 1:12 left, and then hitting the crossbar 25 seconds later.

Those were the best opportunities until Morrow finished the job at 1:30 a.m.

"A lot of teams would have rolled after they went down 3-0," Marleau said. "We played two games tonight against a pretty good team. I think they got the bounces early to go up 3-0. Definitely if we got some of those, maybe it's a different series."

Yeah, they'd be playing again Tuesday without a single fresh player.

In fact, the overhead scoreboard celebrated the end of the second overtime with a video of Kurt Cobain unplugged, making sure nobody lost the tenor of the evening. This was a long, hard slog, one the Sharks, Stars and their respective clienteles will long remember, for different reasons and emotions.

Longest games
Sunday night's 2-1 marathon loss in Dallas marked the fourth time in history that the Sharks have played multiple-overtime games, all of which came on the road:

Year Opponent Game Score Time
1995 Flames Game 7 W, 5-4 1:54 2OT
2006 Oilers Game 3 L, 3-2 2:24 3OT
2007 Predators Game 1 W, 5-4 8:14 2OT
2008 Stars Game 6 L, 2-1 9:03 4OT

E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.