Sorry About That, Chief

When did Anne Hathaway go from cute (Princess Diaries) to hot?

Anyway, sorry about the prolonged silence. I’m officially blaming it on a vow not to post until the Penguins scored in the Stanley Cup finals. Which they did tonight. And won. Strange to say after how they were rendered invisible in the first two games, but if they can duplicate tonight in Game Four, all of a sudden we’ll have a series on our hands as opposed to yet another Red Wings coronation accompanied by the usual frontrunning pukes swarming a hockey arena near you yet curiously absent when it’s football season and the Lions are in town. That said, I’m pretty sure they were all at McAfee Coliseum this past weekend to bellow and bluster over “their” Red Sox. So how did that series sweep feel, eh losers? But I digress; on to assorted musings about Los Tiburones de San José.

• Saturday after next will be the Sharks’ annual used equipment sale. No answer yet forthcoming from the team as to whether any sticks used during the playoffs will not be made available, since they hardly qualify as used… (*rimshot*)

• I didn’t make the recent State Of The Sharks soirée, but looking over what was printed about/from them at the team’s Web site is more than enough to make one wonder exactly what this team is trying to accomplish. Doug Wilson responded to the inevitable query as to why year after year the team was apparently disinterested in taking a swipe at the free agent market with this stock issue answer:

We acquire guys every way possible. Some fellow GM’s say we spent a lot on unrestricted free agents, they are just our own. Cheech, Joe and Milan for example. If you’re going to commit a lot of money, the team wants a guy you know will play hard and wants to be here. If you’re in a bidding war year after year, you have a problem. We’ve been one of the more active teams at the trade deadline.

Um, wait a minute. No one can deny the value of locking up valuable players already on your team. That said, in case it’s escaped everyone’s attention, said players in and of themselves aren’t enough. If they were, the Sharks wouldn’t have been two and through the past three seasons. You can blame Ron Wilson all you want, but no matter who the team’s next coach may be they’re not going to make the problem of Brenden Morrow or reasonable equivalents thereof manhandling any given Sharks defenseman or men trying to impede their shortly forthcoming visit to the crease magically disappear. San Jose needs a bruiser on defense who can keep up with the play, and a couple or more forwards whose mindset is go to the net, stay there, and tell whoever’s trying to crosscheck and slash them away from there if that’s all they’ve got, they’ve got nothing. These players are not going to magically appear out of Worchester or junior. They need to be pursued. Hard. The all is well/the kids developing is all we need speech in response to summertime inactivity is not going to cut it anymore. Frankly, it never did.

• The team is crying poor. Which translates into ticket prices going up. No problem, all the fans love us no matter what, right? Um… right?
• Here’s a shock — third jersey next year! And it’s 99 44/100% certain to be black! That’ll get the team a bunch of wins right there… sarcasm aside, while I’ve never had an issue with merchandising as part of the team’s overall business plan, I’d much rather see better players inside the new sweaters than new sweaters by themselves.
• The AHL all-star game will be in Worchester next year. Plenty of time to make those travel plans for this all-important moment in sports history. What could be finer than a minor league all-star game? Hey, maybe the Worchester organization can pay homage to the hockey history of where the parent team is located and have an old-timers game featuring former Spiders!

Ah well.  Hopefully we’ll have some actual news to talk about soon.