My love affair with the Sharks was more of a reaction against everybody else's love affair with the 1992-1993 Leafs than anything else. I couldn't stand that team with old-ass Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, Dave Andreychuk, and goon-squad Tie Domi. Everybody that crapped all over the Leafs in the 80's hopped on the bandwagon, so I became surrounded by obnoxious Leafs fans. I had followed hockey as a kid and was an Oilers fan back then (who wasn't), but I hadn't followed it for most of my childhood. My high school buddies got me back into it, but I didn't really have a "favorite" team, so I picked the complete polar opposite of the Leafs: the Sharks. Their first few years in the league they were AWFUL, but it didn't bother me. My loyalty was assured when they started sticking it to Detroit in the playoffs. As a side note, Joe Thornton also happens to hail from my home town of London, Ontario, so that's one more reason for me to be a fan.
It was good to see the Sharks pound the Avalanche in game 5, but I've seen this before. I have hope, but as a jaded Sharks fan here's what I expect.
(First, let me say that I called the fact that the Sharks would win big in game 5. That was their "make you think they have it back on track" game, that lulls you into a false sense of security before their ultimate odds-defying failure drops you into the soul-crushing abyss of disappointment).
Game 6: Hard-fought game that will be 1-1 at the end of regulation. It will go into double overtime, and the Sharks will lose on some flukey goal from a no-name Colorado player. This will immediately have everybody buzzing about the "up-and-coming" Avalanche, including profiles on their "scrappy" young players who "don't know enough to know they shouldn't be here".
Game 7: Everybody expects some epic showdown, but instead it's 4-0 Colorado after the first period. Nabakov is pulled, and Griess starts the second period. The Sharks buckle down and score a couple of goals to make it 4-2 - again, making you think that they might have a shot - but eventually succumb to an empty-net goal at the end of regulation for a 5-2 dream-killing final. And again, some "up-and-coming", "scrappy" Avalanche player who "doesn't know enough to know he shouldn't be there" gets a hat trick. This ensures that a lengthy video montage of said Shark-killing hat trick will be played every time his name is mentioned in subsequent series over the course of the playoffs, and will thus repeatedly drive the bitterness and sheer lunacy of the Sharks' first-round defeat through the hearts of Sharks fans everywhere over the next two months. And then at the end of the playoffs when they show that "Wow, that was an amazing playoffs" video montage, the hat trick will be shown one more time, just to snuff out any leftover hope Sharks fans might have had. And I'll probably see it next year too, making the cycle of hatred complete.
But I'm not bitter.
Topic: 2010 NHL Playoff thread of upsets (Read 6870 times)
