Sharks Gameday: No Rest for the Lousy

From Logan Couture's Twitter after last night's game:

"don't think ill write what I'm thinking tonight. Pretty upset, we need to fix our 3rd periods. Back at it tmrw in Chicago, NEED a win."

I have no idea if it's really Logan tweeting, but the man has a point. He's pissed off, as all the Sharks should be. They played more frustrating hockey last night, with two periods of mostly-competent play followed by a ridiculous collapse in the third period.

There's a lot of blame to go around and a bunch of players are hurt. Things are lousy for this team right now. It's going to be hard to be optimistic about their chances this season until we start seeing more consistent play within games.

The Wild aren't even a good team, and the Sharks still folded in front of them. Minnesota rarely scores more than two goals a game and the Sharks let them have five. Most of the third-period goals could be directly traced to what I like to call "stupid hockey" by the Sharks - awful passes, lazy clearing attempts, and standing around looking at stuff instead of keeping up with the play.

Moving on.

Niemi tonight? Probably. Right now the team is playing equally poorly in front of either goalie, so they might as well try to get some of that "Niemi knows how to stop Chicago's shooters" BS voodoo going.

The two Western Conference finalists from last season currently sit at 7th and 8th in the West, tied with 43 points. The points situation in the West is still really close, but not as close as it was. Dallas has 48 points, steadily pulling away from the struggling Sharks. This is a problem.

We're almost halfway through the season now. Wake up, Sharks. You're better than this. At least I hope you are.

Prediction: Sharks win 5-4. The Sharks score five goals in the first two periods and just barely manage to hold on to the lead in the third. Goals by Clowe, Vlasic, Marleau, Thornton, Heatley.