DETROIT — The Sharks have one more chance not to make ingloriously horrible history.
One more chance not to go down in National Hockey League lore as a legendary gagging team that built a perfect 3-games-to-0 lead in a best-of-seven playoff series — and then watched it all leak away in defeat.
One more chance not to join the three other infamous hockey teams that have done that, the only three teams on that list since 1939 when the NHL began playing best-of-seven series.
Is this, like, supposed to be fun? Because it doesn’t feel like fun. Exciting and tense, maybe. But not fun.
“I think it’s good for hockey,” Detroit coach Mike Babcock said.
Easy for him to say. Babcock is behind the bench of the Red Wings, who won here Tuesday night, 3-1, and sent the series back to HP Pavilion for a decisive Game 7 on Thursday night. For the second straight game, the Sharks blew a third-period lead and allowed Detroit to rally from behind and win.
Afterward, the Sharks’ locker room was a place of rapid movement — the team was packing quickly to get its charter flight back to California in the air as soon as possible — and a place of dogged rationalization. Joe Thornton, the Sharks captain, seemed to be saying that his team should be taking inspiration from … the Red Wings themselves
“They lost three in a row and their confidence didn’t suffer,” Thornton said. “Ours won’t suffer, either. You work 82 games to get home ice for Game 7. Now, we’ve just got to make it work.
All true. But shame on the Sharks for letting it get to this point. Applause to the Red Wings for creating that shame. Tuesday night, Detroit totally dominated the first two periods as the Sharks pointedly missed the services of Ryane Clowe, one of their most energetic and hard-hitting players, who stayed back home in San Jose because of an “upper body injury.”
Without Clowe, the Sharks seemed to somehow be operating in a slower gear. They were outshot 10-1 in the first 10 minutes. Detroit could have taken a 5-0 lead in the first two periods if Sharks goalie Antti Niemi had not been so fantastic.
As the Sharks built a 1-0 lead on the scoreboard after a shot by Logan Couture trickled across the goal line about four minutes into the third period, Niemi was impenetrable. He stopped the first 38 Detroit shots he faced. He could not stop the 39th — it tied up the game at 1-1 with 9:22 remaining in the third.
The goal was scored by Detroit centerman Henrik Zetterberg, who tipped a shot from up top by defenseman Niklas Kronwall. But really, the way the Red Wings had been swarming all night, it was just a matter of time. And a few minutes later, when Shark rookie Logan Couture made a rookie mistake by giving away the puck near the blue line to Detroit veteran Valtteri Filppula, the swarm led to the go-ahead goal. An empty-netter finished off the night for the Wings.
“I don’t know if they played that well or we didn’t play that well,” Niemi said.
“They just moved a lot better than we did,” Sharks center Joe Pavelski said.
“We deserved what we got,” said Sharks forward Dany Heatley, who slid across the ice in a vain attempt to block the Kronwall game-tying blast. “They played harder than we did.”
Heatley knows that the Sharks are going to hear a lot about that history in the next two days. Most of them don’t want to read or think or be Facebook friends with the 1942 Detroit Red Wings, 1975 Pittsburgh Penguins or 2010 Boston Bruins, the three teams who blew those aforementioned 3-0 leads.
“This isn’t about any team other than us,” Heatley said. “Those are past teams. This is our team. It’s about us. We’re not worried about any other teams.”
The Red Wings fans at Joe Louis Arena definitely were — and now, they are even looking ahead. They made loud sounds Thursday night, some of which may have helped their team win. And when Darren Helm scored Detroit’s game-clinching empty-netter, a chant from the seats arose and grew louder: “WE WANT THE CANUCKS! WE WANT THE CANUCKS!”
The Vancouver Canucks are the next round’s opponent, waiting for whichever team wins Thursday night. If the Sharks are going to do that, they’ll likely need as much noise at HP Pavilion as fans at The Joe produced. But will the followers of our beloved Los Tiburones be so disillusioned by what’s happened in the last three games that they’ll be sourly nonsupportive?
The Shark players don’t believe so. And they’re probably right.
“I know our crowd’s going to be loud,” said Couture. “But we’re going to need a lot better effort than tonight.”
Pavelski believes the home ice will also restore some juice to the Sharks’ legs, which seemed to be moving at three-quarters speed through the early stretches of Tuesday’s game.
“I think you saw how, in the last two games, home teams came out and skated really well,” Pavelski said. “No one’s giving up yet.”
The Sharks also have a pretty good record through the years in Game 7 decisions, winning four of the six in franchise history.
Pavelski thinks the team can draw on that. “We want everything on our side that we can get. But regardless, we’ve got to play the game. And it’s going to be a fun one,” he said.
Hmmmm. Let’s revisit that thought come Friday morning, shall we? But at least Game 7 is at The Tank. During the regular season, the Sharks finished ahead of Detroit in the Western Conference standings by just one point — the margin of one overtime or shootout victory. And because of that one point, the Sharks will be playing at home Thursday night.
“We’ve played well at home,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. “A lot of you asked me before the series what it meant to have home ice advantage. I guess we’ll find out now.”
Yes, we will. All those things people have said over the years — that the Sharks have lacked a killer instinct to get them over the hump into the Stanley Cup finals (guilty here) — will come back into play. When the Sharks made it to the conference finals a year ago, they thought those demons had been vanquished.
Hi, there, demons. You’re back. With a Thursday 6 p.m. faceoff. One more chance not to be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
Contact Mark Purdy at mpurdy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5092.
