A San Jose Sharks Blog

Potvin's Points:

• The Flames have the three top players in the Western Conference in Iginla, Phaneuf, and Kiprusoff.
• The Flames have more grit and their toughness will be too much for San Jose.
• The Flames were his dark horse pick before the season started.
• The Flames won the regular season series, 3 to 1.
• The Flames scored 12 goals in only four games against the Sharks this year.

PdR's Responses:

• The Sharks have some pretty good players as well. Have you heard of Joe Thornton, Brian Campbell, and Evgeni Nabokov?
• I agree that the Sharks don't have the same level of grit that Calgary does, but that is not to say that San Jose lacks any toughness. I'm not sure if Shelley is going to get into the lineup, but Murray and Rivet are pretty damn tough. Besides, after watching the season finale against Dallas, Team Teal has showed the willingness to mix things up.
• The Sharks were my pick to win it all...biased? Yes, but so what. Who cares what anyone has to say about the beginning of the year. Look at Montreal...many thought that they would be fighting for the 8th playoff spot at best at the end of the year. Instead, they're on top of the Eastern Conference.
• As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Flames have yet to see the "new" Sharks. Calgary hasn't hit the ice with Brian Campbell out there and the Sharks didn't hit their stride (11 game winning streak) until after all four games with the Flames were complete.
• This point actually has me a bit concerned...for some reason, Calgary was able to get a lot of goals past the Sharks. In fact, the Flames actually scored 13 goals in four games against the Sharks this year. I know that 13 is worse than the 12 that Potvin spoke of, but that just goes to show that Denis can be wrong every once in a while...let's hope that he's wrong about this series, too.

As you can see from the beginning of this post, I put the word "expert" in quotation marks because I believe that Potvin knows a ton about hockey...that is very clear, but it seems that he doesn't know a whole lot about the Sharks except for what he can glean from headlines and box scores. The former Islander-great does color for the Panthers down in Florida, so I'm sure his ability to follow San Jose is limited. I'm not saying that he's completely wrong in his assessment. However, I am saying that he shouldn't be so confident about his pick. The Sharks are a good team, 2nd best in the NHL, and they're not going to just hand over the series. I expect a long and tough playoff round, but I have faith in my guys and predict that they will win it in six (*knock on wood*).