So the Sharks season began Thursday night,
and resulted in one of the most heartbreaking, devastating losses I've ever
seen in 34 years of Sharks hockey. With William Eklund about to close out the
game with an empty-net goal to seal a victory, I thought a Sharks win was about
to happen. But the puck never finds its way into the Vegas net, and instead was
chucked down to the Sharks' end by Jack Eichel.
A flub by Sharks
goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic had the puck in the net behind him, tying the game,
3-3. I nearly fell out of my seat in despair. But there's more misery to come.
In OT, Nedeljkovic skates pretty much to the blue line to the play the puck,
but the puck ends up with Vegas, and was politely, quietly put into an empty
net. Game over. Sharks lose. Another "at least they got a point out of it"
disappointment game. The thing is, Nedeljkovic played pretty well until costing
us the game with two awful mistakes.
While we saw nice goal-scoring
from new Sharks Jeff Skinner and Philipp Kurashev, my new hockey idols, Macklin
Celebrini and Will Smith, were kept off the scoreboard. Yes, these guys are my
new idols even though I'm pretty much old enough to be their grandfather. They
were the subject of the evening giveaway of the sleepover bobblehead, the
most-ridiculous bobblehead I've ever seen, but
I'm glad to have one. Hopefully, they'll be back
on the scoreboard ASAP. The evening's other disappointment was, I fully
expected to see in person the NHL debuts of first round picks Michael Misa and
Sam Dickinson. But both were introduced before the game in their nice business
suits instead of their Sharks uniforms. Neither played in the game.
Well, that wraps up another Sharks opener. The conclusion of the game had me
thinking, will we ever see a consistently winning Sharks team again? I remember
when the Sharks making the playoffs was simply something they did every year.
Now, they haven't been in the playoffs since 2019. It's time for this team to
start scaling to the top of the standings; we've had several years of drafting
among the top few picks because the team has had awful records. Now it's time
to win and win and win, Sharks. We've been patient.
