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That's
Entertainment
Sharks' failed season just the way it
is
4/28/09 - By Paul Krill
The
Sharks' most momentous achievement, winning the President's Trophy for most
regular season points, has quickly morphed into the Sharks' biggest post-season
failure yet.
But that's entertainment.
Hockey is just
escapist entertainment. Sports is the original reality TV, with good guys (the
home team) and bad guys (the visiting team) and, unlike movies or TV dramas or
sitcoms, nobody knowing what the outcome will be beforehand. That's all sports
is, really.
As Sharks fans, we're not guaranteed that our team will
ever, ever win a championship and that less-deserving fan bases, such as the
one in Anaheim, will not. If that were the case, fans in Buffalo, Vancouver and
Saint Louis, who have been waiting decades longer than we have, would have
already had a Stanley Cup parade or two down their main streets.
But
they have not.
So we might as well sit back and just let Sharks' games
serve their purpose, which is to entertain for 2.5 hours on game nights.
Anybody not entertained by the last few seconds of Saturday night's game 5
victory for the Sharks? Didn't think so.
FWIW, I'm not the only one
who saw this latest playoff collapse coming. The Sharks by the end of the
season had become just another team losing lots of games. What happened in the
Halloween and Thanksgiving time frames, when the Sharks were defeating everyone
in sight, no longer meant anything five months later.
We had to know
it was all over when the Sharks lost the first two games at home in the Ducks'
series. The hole simply was dug too deep for the Sharks to climb out of it. And
they didn't.
Not even my ridiculous playoff plan suggested a few
months ago, in which the top seeds in the first two rounds would only need to
win three games to advance, would have saved the Sharks. The Ducks whipped them
convincingly. Now, we can all sit and wonder which Sharks players will be back
next year and who will be jettisoned.
So does this latest epic post-season collapse, which
eclipsed all the other Sharks epic post-season collapses, mean we can all relax
if we start losing regular season games next year since we know the regular
season is kind of meaningless? I kind of doubt it.
We'll just have to
restart all this in October and wait another year for the Sharks to try again.
A painful prescription for Sharks fans to swallow but that's the situation we
are presented with at this time.
There is, of course, a bright side to
all this that has nothing to do with hockey. The economy is miserable, with
thousands in the Bay Area losing jobs and home values and 401K plans
plummeting. If there were ever a time to not be shelling out lots of money for
hockey playoff tickets, this, unfortunately, was it.
So there you have
it, the bright side. Not much consolation, I know, when the team appeared ready
to clear the hurdle of post-season failure but instead failed even worse than
before.
Once again, it is time for Sharks fans to find something else
to do while fans in several other cities watch their teams play on. That's the
way it is.
Now go hiking, take a tour of Alcatraz, take a bike ride or
go see a baseball game or something. Because the mighty Sharks have struck out.
Contact Paul at at pjkrillsharks@yahoo.com
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