San Jose Sharks Perfection Dispelled

Every once in a while, a writer gets a flamer. A pathetic, insecure person who lacks the courage and wherewithal to do what we do and, in order to feel better about him- or her-self, takes shots at one's intelligence or manhood or writing ability or whatever they can find to attack about one personally. Then they slink away in the middle of the night, cowards they are, so their views don't have to stand up to any scrutiny.

It shouldn't bother us, but I cannot stand it. The enforcer in me wants to give anyone a beat-down anytime I witness it, whether I am the target or another writer I like (a teammate, if you will) is.

I had one such flamer the other day. When I suggested the Sharks should not be satisfied with their unbeaten start because there were glaring elements of their game missing, he suggested I obviously did not understand the game (never mind my nearly two decades following it as an adult--I obviously picked nothing up!). He referred to me as both dumb and stupid.

Who's stupid now, John Bingham? Two great failings I pointed out in my recap of Tuesday night's game cost them this one: they are not good on the power play, and they took too many penalties.

The Sharks have only three power plays so far, and this does nothing to deter opponents from committing them to stop scoring chances or knock players out of games. Douglas Murray and Milan Michalek missed this game, and we can expect more players to be exposed if we cannot capitalise.

This is more of a problem than ever if we miss time for one of the top six players on the blueline, since the fill-in for Murray is Alexei Semenov. In just the first 24 minutes of the game, he took a bad penalty and committed a bad turnover that led to an odd-man rush.

Taking seven penalties in this game also gave Anaheim a goal, but more importantly it meant they sucked the Sharks into playing their game. Because Joe Thornton was sucked into a fight against Steve Montador, the Ducks did not worry about penalties for the seven minutes because one of the few playmakers on the team would not be in the box.

All of this led to a 4-0 loss, the Sharks first of the season. They have a chance to bounce back tonight with a game at HP Pavilion, 7:30pm against the Philadelphia Flyers.