Holy Crap,

Did anybody see that terrible dive from Joe Thornton tonight in Dallas?  The Sharks scored on that power play he drew (the penalty of which, even more outrageously, was assessed to innocent by-stander Michal Ryder, rather than Sheldon Souray), so, on a night where I had plenty of gripes about calls against the Sharks, I'm reminded to count my blessings before I go to sleep.

1. I am grateful that the Referees did not call goaltender interference on Tommy Wingels for tripping Kari Lehtonen or negate Daniel Winnik's goal.

2. I'm happy that, to my knowledge, the team plane was not injured in any of the tornadoes in Dallas, today.

3. I am relieved that Joe Thornton got away with that crazy dive in the second period!

4. I'm glad we had these two consecutive games against Dallas to get back into form.  Dallas always plays the Sharks physically, which brings out the best in the Sharks and also brings out a lot of penalties in the Stars!  This Sharks team has completely failed to hit people on game-to-game basis, which is very frustrating to watch--extremely so when they're losing.

5. I am so fucking grateful we won!

What I Would Trade for Rick Nash

There has recently been a Canadian metric ton of speculation regarding the trade of Rick Nash to San Jose.  He is a winger making an average 7.8 million dollars a season and has a no-movement clause for the remaining 7 years of his contract.  Here's what I think the Sharks should offer Columbus GM Scott Howson for Rick Nash:

"He's obviously an individual whose IQ is probably the size of a birdseed."

- Alain Vigneault, in reference to Dave Bolland.

Montreal Canadiens @ SJ

Sharks @ L.A.

"So Long and Thanks for the Goalie!"

The Blackhawks lost 1-0 to the Sharks.  Antti Niemi got his first shutout of the year and earned it.  And this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for Doug Wilson.

Doug Wilson, you have no idea how happy I am to know that you are in charge of making the San Jose Sharks a better team.  Your class and professionalism are a tribute to the sport and the Sharks organization.  I love that you don't give people ridiculous contracts, and that Heatley contract that I didn't like that featured a no-trade clause?  you found a way out of it.  and you got Martin Havlat!  You're the greatest.  Most sports fans don't know the warm, comforting feeling of having complete faith in their team's management and I feel lucky to have it.  Thank you, Doug Wilson, for making this team a fun one to watch, year after year.

In other news, the NHL spent a great deal to advertise the "new tradition" that is the NHL Thanksgiving Showdown on NBC, because apparently something can be a tradition even if it hasn't been done twice or, at the time of advertising, once.  I didn't watch the parade and thus, sadly, missed Cee Lo Green's performance on the NHL float, but I did watch the game on Friday.  It was a good match-up between the Bruins and the Red Wings in Boston and yet I found it very tedious.  It really made me realize how much I dislike the NBC crew.  Pierre McGuire is insipid.  Mike Milbury is a blowhard.  Emerick and Olzyck are not very pleasant to listen to.  And maybe I just don't like that they're not on any one side.  It's not football.  It's weird to have a nationally televised game presented as an NHL showcase, because that's not typically how we watch hockey.  I'm happy to tune into another team's broadcast and check out what's happening elsewhere in the league or when I need something in the background while I'm cooking.

NBC spent a lot of time pushing the Tim Thomas/Jimmy Howard angle of this game, possibly because they're both American.  At any rate, the Bruins played Tuukka Rask in net and NBC didn't seem to pick it up until half-way through the first period, so engrossed were they in their own talking points.  No back-up goalie was going to stop them from talking all about Thomas and then asking about him in the behind-the-bench interview with Bruins Coach Claude Julien.

I skipped ahead and then turned it off at the end of overtime.  The shoot-out would have only made the game seem even more like an exhibition.

A Proposed Solution to Defense in the NHL

I wanted to touch on the big buzz-story around the NHL that began this past Wednesday, the night of November 9th.  In a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Philadelphia Flyers refused to even attempt to break out of their zone on multiple occasions because the Lightning were playing defense in what is known as a 1-3-1 formation, in which one defender pressures the puck-carrier, three defenders stand at the red line to break up long passes, and one defender stays deep in their own zone in order to be the first to the puck in the event that the offensive team dumps the puck into the zone.  The Flyers, when presented with this defense, simply stayed in their own defensive zone and skated around with the puck for whole stretches of the game.  I thought it was a funny little story, a quirky side-show that happened in Florida when Flyers Coach Peter Laviolette realized that he had no idea how to beat a "neutral-zone trap" defense.  "No big deal," I thought, watching the highlights.  "Chris Pronger is a whiny bitch whose team refused to play, thus exposing and even highlighting the limits of Peter Laviolette's competence.  And they lost the game and looked like dipshits in the process, so justice is served!"  What produced a stronger reaction from me and drives me to address the subject here, is that the media (and according to Pierre LaBrun, the General Managers) are widely blaming the Tampa Bay Lightning for the lull in play!  That absolutely dumbfounds me.