Jumbo’s Hat Trick Dooms Devils

Now THAT is what San Jose Sharks fans are used to.

The somewhat redundant clarion call for Joe Thornton to shoot more, shoot more, shoot more came to fruition last night with Jumbo’s 4^th career hat trick.  Thornton powered a balanced attack that scored early and often on Martin Brodeur, and the good guys had this game wrapped up by the end of the first period.

There’s the possessed by dark forces Jumbo who sets our hair on end, and then there’s the tickled-by-the-simplicity-of- this-game Jumbo who skates around with impunity while opponents seemed stuck in the mud.  Last night was this latter Thornton, who drove at will to the net, looked great doing it (more!) and was rewarded by a couple of super setups and a great, hometown bounce to boot.

If you were a New Jersey Devils fan, about the only positive you can take away from last night’s 5-2 throttling at the hands of the Sharks, was if you had New Jersey Defensemen Matthew Corrente on your Head-to-Head fantasy team.

In the second period, with the Sharks up 4-1, and the wheels clearly falling off the Devils red wagon, Corrente made the courageous and soft-witted decision to drop the gloves against Clowe and was tenderized for insolence.  Then, he responded to that thumping by playing on the edge and finally getting a game misconduct in the third.

All in, your fantasy squad received 29 PIMs for Matthew Corrente last night, and if you also received points for shots taken to the jaw on the other end of Ryane Clowe…then Matthew really was quite helpful.  Clearly, any motivation tactic he was trying to muster for the Devils only seemed to rile up Clowe’s right hand.

After an unsettling start, the Sharks have now rattled off 3 of their last 4 games behind the ample pads of Antero Niittymaki, a man whose last name could be the hardest final puzzle ever in the history of “Wheel of Fortune.”  Seriously, every time I spell-check a column, and even though I’ve added Niittymaki to my MS Word dictionary 18 times, my computer still insists on freezing up and interrogating me each time it scans the page for errors.

Of course, the same thing happens when I spell-check Antti Niemi, but that just seems to bother me more, probably because he’s been so bloody awful.

The Finnish Sieve is also included him in my spell-check dictionary for obvious reasons.

Next up for the Sharks are the Anaheim Ducks, a fierce rival possessing the worst looking logo in the NHL.  You can barely read it, and it looks like some tier-three MMA league sports drink logo versus one representing a proud Stanley Cup Winning franchise.  In any event, I miss the duck-billed-Jason-Friday the 13th-one, but either way, we get to see a lot of Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf who always come hard and will need to be frustrated by the Sharks.

This upcoming game Saturday feels especially like one that could set the tone in the Pacific Division this season, and a great chance for the Sharks, now with a little momentum, to prove to their Southern neighbors that absolutely nothing has changed and the top team still resides 370 miles to their North.

Besides, guys named Ryan spelled without an “e” at the end are obviously soft, and clearly lack style.