The Sharks fought ‘The Story,' and ‘The Story' won

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If the San Jose Sharks must be sacrificed for the greater good of The Story, then that’s how it has to be. No complaining. No whining. No “We’d have won if not for the goal frame” sniveling. The right thing happened, and that’s the only thing on the menu today.

The Vegas Golden Knights, the closest thing hockey has produced that rivals the 2016 Leicester City team and the 1969 New York Mets, polished off the Sharks in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinal, 3-0, and they earned every single bit of it. The only way they could ruin this is if someone in the organization says at any point, “Nobody believed in us, but . . .”

OF COURSE NOBODY BELIEVED IN YOU. NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE IN YOU. YOU PULLED POCKET BULLETS AS YOUR UNDER CARDS AND THEN TWO MORE ON THE FLOP. JUST BE HAPPY AND STAY GOOD. AN ENTIRE SPORT DEMANDS IT OF YOU.

Now that the safety warning has issued, here’s to the Sharks, who simply lost to a superior team. A superior new team. A superior new team that still is brushing the Styrofoam packing peanuts from their shoulders. A superior new team whose goaltender, Marc-Andre “What Hell Did He Just Do” Fleury, is the new Martian Manhunter -- a shape-shifter who also commands telepathy and telekinesis but doesn’t have green skin.

Against that . . . well, nice job, lads. You did what you could do, and now you leave the tournament a beaten team because . . . well, because sometimes that’s just the way it goes.

What comes next, of course, is a long summer wondering what could have been and what needs to be done. The Sharks remain the nice little team that can’t close the deal, and though they have been as good as they have ever been with Peter DeBoer as the head coach and young players finally beginning to emerge as a next generation, they leave this season knowing that they simply got magicked.

That may be what awaits either the Winnipeg Jets or Nashville Predators in the Western Conference Final, and if so, then we must all bow to our new shinny overlords. And yes, that includes you, Mark Davis, and your undercard-to-the-main-event football team. Maybe you can get someone to sell you two in the loge for Game 1 at, what, $14,000 per? Hey, it’s Vegas. It’s all Confederate money there.

As for San Jose, they ate the inevitable, like the 2016 West Ham team that finished seventh to Leicester, or the 1969 Chicago Cubs who watched the Mets win 50 of their last 30 games (a rough estimate) to go to the World Series. To paraphrase Sonny Curtis and the Crickets from 60 years ago, the Sharks fought The Story, and The Story won.

And it can’t get any easier to explain than that.

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