Kukla's Korner

Petshark: Talking Stick

Entries with the tag: Stockton+Thunder

The Worcester Sharks and the Stockton Thunder play today

The Sharks play the Kings tomorrow.  I don’t know about all Sharks fans but I’ll just hold my breath until then.  It would be nice to have Douglas Murray back in but, as he said, we don’t want him rushing back and having to leave the game again.

Sharks fans are still not showing universal, not even majority approval of Niemi’s performance lately.  That bad first goal in Dallas was vexing but I thought Niemi redeemed himself in advance.  It was nothing short of miraculous that the Sharks managed to score first after being pinned so long in their own zone to start the game.  Was it not as bad as it looked?  I must be biased and prone to panic.  But I credit Niemi with some of that non-scoring by Dallas.  Later, his timely save that preceded Thornton’s back-breaking goal was not beautiful and but it did the job.  No complaints here.  If the team’s confidence continues to grow, so will Niemi’s.

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Filed in: , San Jose Sharks | Petshark: Talking Stick | Permalink
 Tags: Antti+Niemi, Kelly+Cup, Matt+Tennyson, Stockton+Thunder, Worcester+Sharks,

Looking for wins

There are bounces and there are mistakes and there are travel delays and three games in four days and freak accidents and injuries… and the Sharks lose again.  I’m all out of anger and sorrow.  Despair starts to set in.  I walk away from the game, start doing the laundry and the dishes.  I can’t really walk away, I keep poking my head around the corner to peek at the tv, I keep hoping.  It doesn’t work out.

Later, Ryane Clowe said “We’re looking for wins…” (Sharks Talk)  That made me start humming “in all the wrong places….”  When I start humming country songs, I know I’m in a bad place, is that stale beer I smell?  I moved on to a better tune, that old standby from Monty Python.

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Filed in: , San Jose Sharks | Petshark: Talking Stick | Permalink
 Tags: Adirondack+Phantoms, Logan+Couture, Monty+Python, Ryane+Clowe, Stockton+Thunder, Trenton+Titans, Worcester+Sharks,

The league with no name

In today’s Mercury News there’s a story by Mark Emmons about Alex Stalock’s return to pro hockey.  Stalock recently completed a stint with the Stockton Thunder:

When Sharks training camp opened in September, there was a growing optimism. Stalock skated for the first time. He slowly worked up to a rehab stint with Stockton, a minor league affiliate for the Sharks and Edmonton Oilers, making his return on Jan. 21. -Mercury News

It’s a very good story about a player and a recovery that is just this side of miraculous.  Yet Emmons doesn’t mention the name of the minor league.  Sigh.

The league’s name is sort of like Ulysses S Grant’s middle name: just initials.  Unlike Grant, the league does have a proper name where the initials are: East Coast Hockey League, but nobody out here calls it that.  It’s one of those names that tells you where someone came from but not what or where they are now.  “Taylor,” for example: once upon a time, someone in that family was a tailor, probably in England.  The odds are pretty slim that this person is actually a tailor in England now.

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Filed in: , San Jose Sharks | Petshark: Talking Stick | Permalink
 Tags: Alex+Stalock, ECHL, minor+league, Pat+Curcio, San+Francisco+Bulls, Stockton+Thunder,

Mug safety and other thoughts

Something, presumably not grave, happened to the Sharks number one goalie yesterday in practice.  I will assume it had nothing to do with a baseball bat:

@PollakOnSharks: “Change in net: #Sjshark Niemi dinged up in practice and Tyson Sexsmith recalled from WOR to serve as Greiss’s back-up tonight vs. DAL.”

If you’ve been following Twitter news about Alex Stalock, you might wonder why the Sharks would fly Sexsmith all the way out here and send Nitty back to Worcester instead of just bringing Stalock over from Stockton.  Sure, Sexsmith is higher in the depth chart but all that to and fro air travel is hardly a sound ecological strategy.  Luckily, I stumbled on an answering machine tape out in Stockton that recorded this recent phone call:

“Hi, Dan, Doug here.  How are you this morning?”
“No.”

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Filed in: , San Jose Sharks | Petshark: Talking Stick | Permalink
 Tags: Al+Stalock, Antti+Niemi, fictional+conversations, John+McCarthy, Ryane+Clowe, Stockton+Thunder, Thomas+Greiss, Tyson+Sexsmith,

     

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