Three reasons to believe Sharks can rally in Stanley Cup

“We’ve won games all year, and that’s the plan (Thursday)”.

If the Penguins clinch the Stanley Cup tonight, 105.9 The X and ESPN Radio will be broadcasting from Buford’s from 12:30-4:30 a.m. Friday. All day and night I keep reading how the Penguins are playing almost ideal hockey and the Sharks are playing terribly.

“But yeah, I’ve been up 3-1 a couple times”.

So answer me this. There has to be something for long-suffering Sharks fans to believe in, right? “Once you get in the game mode and you get to the rink, you flush all that away”. If this is the best the Penguins can do against a team so bad than the Penguins must not be all that great, right? He leads the Penguins in scoring and has put up numbers consistently through a series where scoring has proved hard. Four games and countless stats later point to that. “Out-chancing them of late, had just as many opportunities, just haven’t capitalized”.

The Sharks will obviously be a desperate team on the verge of elimination.

Earlier this season the Penguins looked nothing like a Stanley Cup contender. Losing also makes fatigue evident. “We’ve been able to get the big goal when we needed it”. He has the Penguins looking like themselves again and has them playing entertaining hockey. The Sharks are deader than the great white at the end of Jaws.

So can the Sharks put it all together for a night?

In my opinion the Sharks biggest problem is figuring out how to play the Pens.

If that happens and they hold on or extend that lead over 60 minutes, they would return to the SAP Center Sunday night with a chance to tie the series in front of their home crowd.

“There’s just as much pressure on them”, said defenseman Paul Martin, who spent five years with the Penguins before joining the Sharks this season. “We play a different way when we have a lead”. The Penguins haven’t played from behind in what seems like ages. That starts with the defensemen afraid to pinch Pinching on the Penguins can spell disaster with 2 on 1s and 3 on 2s coming the other way.

The post Joe Thornton on Game 5: Sharks need an attacking mindset appeared first on Working the Corners. The rest of the time it has simply been the Sharks trying to stop the Penguins game. “You could feel in the room that we were going to win that night. We have to be better on the forecheck and get going right away”.

San Jose hasn’t exactly lit up the opening frame thus far, averaging just six shots per game in first 20 minutes of action. Sheary, rested and still confident after a brief talk with Sullivan, returned to his pest-like self and has scored twice during the Cup final, including the overtime victor in Game 2. All four segments are entirely different.

The Stanley Cup will be in the building tonight and the champagne is on ice. Voters, though, will remember he was suspended for one game in the second round for an illegal hit on Washington’s Marcus Johansson. The pressure is 100% on the Penguins tonight. People are flown in from all over the world. “They’ll be pushing to finish things now, and last they want to do is get on a plane back to San Jose”. That is a lot of logistics. There was Malkin skating with objective, breaking up passes on one end of the ice and looking for his shot at the other. There is an extra level of stress on top of an already insane level. We have all been around long enough to know that whenever EVERYONE says a team can’t lose they often lose. If the Sharks can jump out with a few goals ALL those pressures will surface. Malkin’s performance came barely 36 hours after Sullivan praised the star center for his hard work while adding the team needed even more from him if the Penguins wanted to close out the franchise’s fourth title.

Try Relay: the free SMS and picture text app for iPhone. You can’t believe your press clippings.