The Detroit Red Wings are in town Thursday night and that means
a Sharks team that has spent much of the season struggling to get
into the playoff picture can gauge its chances of climbing higher
than third place in the Western Conference standings. San Jose
entered Wednesday trailing second-place Detroit by four points.
SAN JOSE
The Detroit Red Wings are in town Thursday night and that means a Sharks team that has spent much of the season struggling to get into the playoff picture can gauge its chances of climbing higher than third place in the Western Conference standings.
San Jose entered Wednesday trailing second-place Detroit by four points.
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Maybe it’s fitting that the newest Shark did the clearest job of spelling out what’s at stake in Thursday night’s meeting of longtime rivals.
“We come out ahead tomorrow and we come away with a good opportunity to maybe overtake them down the stretch,” defenseman Ian White said. “If they win, they’re that much tougher. Huge game for both teams.”
Coach Todd McLellan prefers to have his players concentrate on Thursday night’s matchup as “one night, two points, that’s it.” But he also recognizes the value of the position the Sharks have put themselves in as a result of their current seven-game winning streak.
“You’re a healthier team if you’re trying to catch somebody rather than waiting to be caught,” McLellan acknowledged Wednesday before adding the Sharks are still very aware of the crowd of teams just behind them despite their 16-2-1 record over the past six weeks.
And if anyone needs an explanation as to why catching the Red Wings during the final 18 games of the season is important, defenseman Douglas Murray turns to playoffs past and future.
“We had home ice against Detroit last year, and we got off to a great start against them. It’s huge,” Murray said of San Jose’s five-game knockout of Detroit to advance to the Western Conference finals. “They’re a team you usually have got to go through to win the Stanley Cup, and we would much rather play in The Tank than over at Joe Louis.”
This is the final game of the season between the teams, and the fact that the Sharks have won twice at Joe Louis Arena while losing at HP Pavilion doesn’t change Murray’s thoughts on home-ice advantage, because he sees the last three games as atypical.
McLellan, on the other hand, doesn’t see that particular development as all that strange.
“Both teams have very good road records, both teams are very comfortable playing on the road and in hostile environments, and both teams are veteran teams,” the Sharks coach said. “We’d like to change that trend obviously, but you’ve got to put the work in for that to happen.”
The Red Wings have become one of the Sharks’ top rivals over the years, a situation fueled in part by four postseason series that have been evenly divided.
More recently, McLellan’s move in June 2008 from his role as a Detroit assistant to the head coaching job in San Jose seems to have leveled the regular-season competition between the teams — still embarrassingly in Detroit’s favor at 19-44-8 — as things stand at 5-5-1 over the past three season.
But with their overall success, the Red Wings have made themselves targets elsewhere as well — making it easy for any new Sharks to quickly understand the rivalry.
“In Chicago, we battled against them a lot, and you always got motivated when they came into town or you’re going into their barn,” said former Blackhawk Ben Eager, who is expected to play Thursday night after missing one game with an upper body injury. “You know you’ve got to be ready when you play against them, because if you’re not, they’ll take advantage of you.”
In St. Louis, fans — and players — get up for the Red Wings as well.
“Blues-Red Wings has a lot of history, although the last 10 years have clearly been dominated by Detroit,” said Sharks forward Jamal Mayers, who played a decade with St. Louis. “Needless to say, I don’t like them.”
Have the three games he’s played against the Red Wings as a Shark felt different?
“Did we win them?” Mayers asked rhetorically.
— Story by David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
