NHL Recap: Diary of a Last Place Fan CBJ @ SJS

Another way the Sharks find to rip your hearts out on the hopeless season

The San Jose Sharks once again found a way to rip out the hearts of fans on Saturday night. In front of an almost full house in San Jose, the Sharks miraculously come from two goals down in the second to blow the lead late in the game and hand the equally bad Columbus Blue Jackets a 4-3 win.

You would figure that Columbus would come into this game, at least showing they had some heart in their game. They had fired their General Manager on Thursday, so you figured that the team would come out guns blazing to show that they still deserved to be in the NHL. After saying that, who do you think scores first? That’s right, Anthony Duclair scores 3:39 in to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead. Then it was the typical Sharks first period. Hold on and hope for the best. Well, we didn’t get that, as Werenski scored his second of the year at 15:16 to make it 1-1. Followed up 1:08 later by Marchenko’s sixteenth of the season and the Jackets, looking like a team that was desperate, go to the locker room up 2-1 at the break. The Sharks doing what they do best in the first period were running around their own zone. Not spending much time in the offensive area and just hanging on by their fingernails. Maybe, something better happens in the second.

Nope, not quite. Voronkov scores his fourteenth of the year at 7:14 to put the Jackets up 3-1. As all of us Sharks fans know, this would be like staring at Everest and thinking how the Hell are we going to climb that. Then, do my eye deceive me? Duclair scores on a breakaway:19 later, and hey, we are back in it at 3-2. The Sharks, to their credit, played reasonably well in the second period. They carried the play sometime and, kept the Jackets shots to the outside, and gave Kappo Kahkonen clear sightlines on the puck. Then we climbed Everest. Zetterlund scores his fifteenth of the year at 15:29 to tie the game at 3-3. That is the score we go to the locker room at.

As the third period started you actually had feeling in the SAP Center for the first time all season. The Sharks were playing well. They were actually holding their own against an NHL team. As the game wore on, it had the feeling that something would happen late or even overtime. That feeling turned out to be right. For one of the few times this year, the goalies let the Sharks down. Boone Jenner flips a little backhand towards the net at 19:47, and it ever so slowly goes through Kahkonen’s legs to give the Jackets the game 4-3 with 12 seconds left in the period.

In trying to recap this as a fan, the only word that came to mind was crushing. This was a team that is just as bad as we are and has been a train wreck since they fired Mike Babcock before he coached a game. The building was electric. The fans were into it, and BANG! They find a way to rip out our hearts again. Oh well, at least we get Vegas on Monday afternoon at the Tank. Remember fans game is at 1:00.