Sharks need answers beneath beards and clichés

By Art Spander

SAN JOSE — What are the Sharks going to say? That they’re not as good as the Pittsburgh Penguins — which, obviously, they’re not. Athletes never say that, even though deep down, beneath the beards and the clichés, they may think that way.

Instead, they tell us what we’ve heard dozens of times from teams in a hole — mainly that they just need a break or, more precisely, a goal.

Just need to play from in front, something that in the first Stanley Cup final of their quarter-century history, the San Jose Sharks have been unable to do.

They did win the third game in overtime on Saturday. But those few seconds that led to eternity marked the only time in four games, including Monday night’s 3-1 loss, that the Sharks held a lead.

The Penguins were favored in this final, and it’s easy to understand why. They skate better, score faster and keep control. Four games, the last two here at SAP, where the enthusiasm of the sellout crowds diminished as the periods mounted — reality can crush even the most optimistic of fans — and there’s no mistaking a trend. Or a mismatch.

So strange the comparisons between the Bay Area’s two teams in the finals, the Warriors, rolling along in the NBA over a Cleveland Cavaliers squad that is saying it just needs to perform as normal, and the Sharks, being rolled over — all right, skated over — and uttering the same responses.

This doesn’t mean either the Sharks or Cavs are to be keel-hauled by that awful description, loser, because how can you be a loser if the team has won enough to reach the final step? It’s just that the media and the fans put so much stock in championships that sometimes the character and success that had everyone gleeful is abruptly discounted.

Sure, the Sharks could win the next game, Thursday in Pittsburgh, but also it could snow Thursday in San Jose. Neither will happen. Yes, as Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said matter-of-factly, the games have been close — Game 4 on Monday was the only one decided by more than one goal — but that emphasizes even more the difference between the teams.

The Penguins find ways to win the close games. That’s the ultimate mark of a champion.

“We’ve got to find a way to get on the board early,” DeBoer said. Exactly. But why would they be able to do it now when they couldn’t four consecutive games?

The only thing that’s certain is if they don’t have the lead when the next game is over, the series is over, and the Sharks will be standing there at the handshake contemplating next year.

Maybe they already are. Joe Pavelski, who played so many years before reaching the Cup final, implied that the Sharks on occasion have been virtual spectators, maybe overwhelmed by playing on the NHL’s biggest stage.

“Sometimes the players didn’t make the play,” he said. “You want to keep it simple.” You’ve heard it before in other sports: the Super Bowl is just a football game, the U.S. Open just a golf tournament. But when you’ve never been there after waiting your whole career, years and years, to get there, the approach is different — not necessarily frenzied, but less focused. Or too focused, not relaxed.

After the game, too many of the Sharks used the word “if” in their conversations with the media. If they had capitalized on the passing early on. If they had played the first and second periods as intensely and aggressively as they did the third, when they got their lone goal, by Melker Karlsson, well ... you know the rest of the comment.

But they didn’t, because the Penguins, who locked it up with that third goal after Karlsson’s score, wouldn’t let them.

“We have to find ways to get the first goal,” said the Sharks' Logan Couture. “We haven’t played our best hockey. I think everyone has another level they can rely on.”

Said DeBoer: “We’ve been chasing the lead the whole series.”

The lead and the Penguins.