This is San Jose’s first trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
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The Sharks will get unprecedented coverage in the coming days and weeks in their first Cup final, which begins Monday against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – Two years after their most devastating playoff loss, the San Jose Sharks held their most meaningful celebration. None of those games came in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The San Jose Sharks moved into the NHL Stanley Cup final for the first time in franchise history following a 5-2 rout of the St Louis Blues in game six on Wednesday.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling”, Thornton said. “You like to not have to”. Pete has really stressed that it’s going to take everybody to get where we need to go. But we realise there’s more out there. “I think we’ll enjoy this tonight and our focus will turn to the big prize on Friday”. A couple seasons ago the Sharks lost a first-round series to the Los Angeles Kings after holding a 3 game to 0 lead. The fans here have waited so long, 25 years.
Good teams go home earlier than they want in the Stanley Cup playoffs all the time. They’ve had a lot of high hopes…
Joe Pavelski and Joel Ward led the way for San Jose as Pavelski netted his National Hockey League post-season-high 13th goal and Ward added a pair of goals in Game 7 including what would be the eventual winning goal early in the 3rd period.
A long-struggling team that’s failed to get over that final hump all of sudden finding success is often chalked up to luck, but San Jose pushed past a gauntlet of West powers and luck had nothing to do with it.
Ward scored his second goal of the game and sixth of the playoff series three minutes into the third period by deflecting a Couture pass by Blues goalie Brian Elliott.
“He’s a private person”, said his longtime friend Tony Mohagen, who flew out from Edmonton for the occasion.
“They’ve bonded together here better than any team I’ve coached in the last 10 years”, Hitchcock said. But led by first-year coach Peter DeBoer, a familiar core and added depth, the Sharks recovered this year and are now only four wins from a championship.
There are plenty of house-cleaning issues before the Blues decide how much of the team will return.
Anytime we start a new series, I usually side with the home team before getting a feel of how things play out. He had to answer questions about what went wrong, why his team felt short, what kind of adjustments will be needed in the off-season. the stuff Thornton and Marleau are usually answering in late May. Thornton assisted on Pavelski’s goal to set the tone and Marleau had two assists in the third period that set off chants of “We Want The Cup!”
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The Sharks now await the Game 7 victor of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Pittsburgh Penguins. We will update this story once we have more information. It’s another step. This is the third one now. “We all come to the rink prepared, ready to work, then have some fun after”. “I’ll tell you that right now”, said Sharks centre Joe Thornton. “Right now. not enough”.
