Sharks Gameday: 21 Years

Yay, hockey's back!

Another season dawns with the highest of expectations for the San Jose Sharks. It's a blessing and a curse to be a fan of a team that considers anything other than a Stanley Cup a failure, but that's the reality of the situation. The Sharks have plenty of Pacific Division titles, President's Trophies, and all that other glittery garbage. It's Cup time.

That said, the long, grueling regular season stretches in front of us like a road made of sandpaper...or something (sorry about that, my simile muscle is a bit weak from lack of use during the off-season. We need to start doing a blogger training camp).

This will be the Sharks' twenty-first season in the NHL. Going into the season the team has, without a doubt, its best defensive squad ever. Combine this with some really exciting new forward lines and there is a lot to be optimistic about for Shark fans. If the pre-season is any indication of what we can expect in the regular season, the Sharks are going to win about eighty percent of their games and Thomas Greiss will be a serious Vezina candidate*.

2011-2012 will be my second full regular season writing about the Sharks, and I'm already bored of writing normal gameday posts. This year I'm going to theme all of my gamedays around my top 82 favorite films, as determined by my Flickchart.com list. I haven't really thought a lot about how this will work - I think sometimes I'll just include a quote from the movie, other times I'll go into excruciating detail about how the Sharks' current situation fits in with the movie I'm talking about (as in this post from the playoffs).

My 82nd-favorite film is the Korean mystery/thriller Oldboy. I'm not going to talk much about it because it's one of those movies that you want to go in to without having anything spoiled. If you haven't seen it then you have some business to take care of as soon as possible. It's on Netflix Watch Instantly and it's awesome.

From Oldboy, I'll feature a single quote:

Can 10 years' worth of imaginary training... be put to use?

Shark fans been imagining how great the team will be with Brent Burns and Martin Havlat and the other new guys (I think maybe Colin White is on the team now? It's hard to keep track.) We've been dreaming of a resurgent Joe Thornton, a maturing Logan Couture, and a dangerously adorable Tommy Wingels. On paper and in the pre-season everything seems to work. But how will it all play out in real life: the regular season?

Tonight we begin to find out.

Prediction: Sharks win 4-1. Goals from Pavelski, Clowe, and Picklesnake. A bunch of dudes get beaten up in a hallway with a hammer.

* = It's important to note at this point that the pre-season is NOT an indication of what we can expect in the regular season.