Sharks start season 2-0… But it’s early!

The Sharks have started the season 2-0, beating the Blues on opening night in OT 5-4 in OT, and the Islanders 2-0.

Not a bad start. the Blues are a better team than most people give them credit for, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re good. But with Guerin and Tkachuk on the team, as long as they’re pushing to make things happen (the game tying goal at :05 was simply those two not giving up), this team will be competitive to some degree, and will take out teams that take it lightly. The Sharks looked okay, but a bit tight — the early goal on Toskala was clearly nerves. He settled down later and was okay.

Out on the Island? well, not so. DiPietro was good, but when you look at the roster (Kozlov and Yashin, Satan, Jason Blake, Tom Poti, Miro Satan, Chris Simon…..) do you see a stud scoring line anywhere? Or even a stud scorer? The Islanders out-skated the sharks in the first period, and still were down 2-0 because of penalties. the Sharks picked it up in the 2nd, and the Islanders really had trouble generating any pressure after that. Nabokov looked very sharp, he wasn’t pressured a lot, and when he was, he made it look easy.

The big negative to me in both games was Mark Bell, who showed me nothing. I didn’t see anything seriously bad here, it mostly seemed to me he wasn’t really in sync with Thornton and Cheechoo, and just not comfortable with the system the Sharks use. I’ll give him some time.

Neither game showed me the Sharks at the best — but it’s two wins against teams we should have won. It’s a nice start. And now, it’s on to Alberta where we’ll get a real test of the team on Monday…

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