Sharks 6 vs Florida 2

or the Joe! Freaking! Thornton! era continues.

Sooner or later, the sharks are going to lose a game. Sooner or later they’re going to ONLY score three goals on a team. It just doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.

Last night, against a tired Florida team, the Sharks played their weakest period yet in the “Joe” era, opening the game with only five shots but ending the period 1-1. Florida, which had played the night before in Dallas (and lost a heartbreaker), didn’t arrive in San Jose until 7 in the morning because of weather delays out of Dallas, but they made things tough for the Sharks early. In the second, the Sharks started rolling, Mark Smith (Mark SMITH?) scoring two goals (for the first time in his career) and never looked back. AFter that point, the game wasn’t even close, although a horribly soft goal by Nabokov from Stumpel made the score a bit less lopsided.

Nabokov’s found his game, and looks solid. He got called for a brain cramp (um, playing a puck in the no-touch zone) after the puck bounced over his stick and he reacted.

Kid notes:

Stevenson got another goal, in somewhat limited minutes. Doug Murray only had one really significant hit last night, on Gratton, but it took off Gratton’s helmet (with a bit of an elbow, I think, but it seemed as if the arm was put up defensively, not thrown into Gratton’s face when Gratton initiated the hit). Gratton came back to try again, and I’ll call that second round a draw. What I keep noticing about Murray is he’s on the ice for goals: three of the six last night. He’s not generating points, but the team is scoring when he’s taking a shift regularly.

Ref notes:

refs were Kimmerly and Sutherland, and they did a solid job. I felt the goaltender inteference call in the first was a bit weak, but the refs have been told to protect the goalies; Kimmerly called an unsportsmanlike on Scott Thornton after he chirped on a call, but I’ll cut him some slack, because he took a puck to the face as he was blowing the whistle, and it clearly stung and I think Thornton should have realized it was a bad time to argue — but I thought what he said (we were in lipreading range) didn’t justify it.

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