San Jose Sharks Will Advance To the Third Round

A bold statement to be sure, but a month ago I picked them to face the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Cup Final.

San Jose is a team whose time has come, mostly because it has to. Several key members of the San Jose team will be entering free agency this offseason and are literally playing for their lives.

Joe Pavelski, Patrick Marleau, Devin Setoguchi, Evgeni Nabokov, Rob Blake, Jed Ortmeyer, and 17 others may in fact find themselves playing for other teams next season.

There is little chance, of course, of the Sharks losing all of those players. They will lose some, and among those who will almost certainly be departing is the longtime Shark and former captain Marleau.

Marleau was a late scratch for last night's Game One of their second round series against the Detroit Red Wings.

"He had been fighting the flu for the past 24 hours," Sharks coach Todd McLellan explained. "His temperature was at a point where it was dangerous for him to play. It wasn't healthy, and we sure won't risk his health for that for one night. We missed him, but I thought the rest of the team stepped up and filled in admirably." San Jose came out on top with a 4-3 victory.

Last night's game was surprisingly low in regard to the total number of shots. Both teams combined for a meager 55 shots. Montreal's Jaroslav Halak could have stopped those by himself.

Pavelski is one of the bigger stories of the success the Sharks are enjoying this postseason so far. Leading the playoffs with seven goals, Pavelski is also second in the league for total points in the playoffs with 11, three behind Sidney Crosby.

At just 25 years of age, Pavelski is also coming off a season in which he recorded 51 points in just 67 games this year and will likely be courted by several teams this year. Of course, his being a restricted free agent does bode well for the Sharks, but at the end of the day, if another team wants him badly enough, he'll be gone as well.

The Sharks and Wings renew their series once again from San Jose this Sunday from the "Shark Tank," where the Sharks will be looking to put a bigger bite on the Red Wings and take a commanding 2-0 series lead into Detroit this coming Tuesday.