Sharks Visited By Actual Sharks- Go On 12-2-1 Tear

For a while (a while meaning most of the season) things were not looking up for the San Jose Sharks. Captain and defensive stalwart Rob Blake had retired over the offseason, and franchise goalie Evgeni Nabokov had departed for greener pastures (green pastures meaning Russia). The team was left with journeyman Antero Niittymaki, and Stanley Cup winning average-joe Antti Niemi covering the crease. On the blue line, youngsters Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Jason Demers were expected to pick up some of the slack as compliments to veterans Dan Boyle, Douglas Murray, and Niclas Wallin. Regardless, many of the teams issues during the first half of the season were actually found within the Sharks' corps of forwards. Captain Joe Thornton underperformed, as did newly resigned core players Joe Pavelski and Patrick Marleau. Rookie Logan Couture proved to be a revelation, and led all rookies in goal scoring through the first 41 games, yet was obviously not enough to make up for the lack of production from the previously mentioned stars. Thus, as the Sharks approached January, they seemed to be a team that had taken a step backwards from their hopes of a Stanley Cup. Their goaltending was weak, as was their defense, and they seemed to lack the general grit and physicality needed to win in the post season. They were also about to go 1-6 to start the first month of the year.

Yet suddenly, something changed. On January 15, the team began a win streak that would eventually turn into a 12-2-1 run that would last into late February. January 15 was also around the time that the team acquired depth players Ben Eager and Kyle Wellwood, a coincidence which has some thinking that their additions sparked this win streak. It would make sense, considering that the Sharks had also lost role players like Manny Malhotra from the 09-10 campaign. Yet according to officials within the organization who I'm bestest buddies with, the acquisitions of these forwards had little to do with the recent trend of winning.

"We put them in a room with Tiger Sharks," said an anonymous source named Daniel Wilkins who works as a trainer for the San Jose franchise.

"You mean you put them in a pool with sharks, right?"

"No," he replied. "We put them in a room with a bunch of sharks that can breathe without water, and had them give our players a candid conversation about what it means to be a shark."

"Well what does it mean to be a shark?" I asked.

"Well, it takes hard work, and dedication to be a shark. No one ever got anywhere in hockey, or in ferocious predatory activity, without working hard and being physical."

Sure enough, the advice seemed to work. They've gotten points in 13 of their last 15 games, and seem poised to stay in the thick of the playoff hunt well into the final games of the season. The situation must have really been frightening and ironic for Kyle Wellwood though. He left Russia because of dogs, and wound up back in America, being advised (and presumably snapped at) by a gaggle of terrestrial Tiger Sharks.