San Jose Sharks Need to Find Their Inner Bruce Willis

The Dole Nutrition Institute ranked Columbus as a top city for salad consumption.

Sorry, but even with my full wits about me, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything more interesting than that to say about the City of Columbus, Ohio.  And in my present despondent state, on the heels of witnessing the San Jose Sharks twice give up third period leads before twice getting dispatched in overtime on two straight nights…well, I need someone to help me put things right again.

I will now look to Bruce Willis for guidance.

The San Jose Sharks are like John McClane in the first Die Hard movie, right after Hans Gruber has ordered his merry band of Mentos commercial terrorists to shoot up the glass, or as he puts it in the movie…“shert the glerrrrrs.” The Sharks are shaken, and dodging bullets and continuous late comebacks by swarming opponents.  Only slightly protected from danger, San Jose is crouching and cowering under some corrugated wood desk, and just looking for some hope.  They are sustaining the heavy machine fire of negative sentiment and a deflated locker room, and just trying their best to avoid more falling shards of gut-wrenching third period goals and extra frame game winners by opponents.

That, and on top of everything else, they seem to have lost the freakin’ detonators of self-confidence and taken their shoes of moxy off, rendering themselves barefoot and exposed in an NHL world rife with broken glass!

Ok…those last metaphors were just the pain talking.

As a Sharks fanatic, any loss hits hard.  You pair two overtime losses of the comeback variety together, and hiding under a desk yourself to avoid witnessing another late implosion seems a decent strategy.  Add to that, the fact that you’ve had to witness the identical miserable storyline play out on two successive nights, and the situation seems more hopeless.

The good news is, the movie and season are not that far along and the Sharks’ mug is the only one on the theater posters.  It’s time for San Jose to lay down a little cover fire, let loose a rousing Bruce Willis-ian ahhhhhhhh and make a break for the safety of the Nakatomi Plaza stairwell.  Yes, we’ve had some serious recent setbacks and our confidence has been attacked as a team, but we’ve still got the radio, still have the machine gun, are still wearin our lucky undershirt and have the Dad from “Family Matters” on our side (i.e. Todd McLellan).

The Columbus Blue Jackets bring to town tomorrow night the firepower of one of the most accomplished and feared power forwards in the NHL in Rick Nash.  Nash is a known sniper and physical beast, who has become all the more dangerous with the emergence of some young supporting cast mates in Derick Brassard and Jakub Voracek.  No longer forced to comprise the entirety of the Columbus offense (along with Jackets vet R.J. Umberger), Nash and the Blue Jackets are now featuring two complete scoring lines each night.

In addition, as allergic as the San Jose Sharks have been to winning on the road, the Blue Jackets have traveled very well, losing only once on the road this year.  With the Jackets on a 7-3 clip over their last 10 games, the Sharks are hoping that the Anaheim Ducks, who they play this evening, can put a few lumps on them before they hit HP Pavilion tomorrow night.

At this point, the Sharks could use a little help from anybody, and a banged up Columbus team playing on the second night of a back-to-back might be just what San Jose needs to get back on track.

Besides, if John McClane can put his head down and make it to the stairwell, so can the San Jose Sharks.

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