St. Marty’s Day

Last night The San Jose Sharks and The Detroit Red Wings squared off to probably the most important game of the season.  Over the past few seasons, San Jose has been able to match up against Detroit and that is credited to Todd Mcllelan coaching style he brought over from Detroit when he accepted the coaching position with The Sharks.  Not even a minute into the opening Sharks forward Joe Pavelski opened the scoring for San Jose to take a 1-0 lead.  Later in the period Martin Havlat scored a wicked wrister that fooled Howard to extend The Sharks lead to 2-0.  That lead was short lived when Pavel Datysuk scored from a very sharp angle an roofed it past Niemi to close the gap to 2-1.  In the second period, both teams played tighter and more defensive game that lead to no scoring at all.  Meanwhile in the third period, Detroit managed to tie the game when Henrik Zetterberg used an illegal pick on Sharks defensemen Vlasic to let Valtteri Filppula fire a laser beam type shot past Niemi.  The game was not settled at regulation it took almost the entire Overtime period when Marty Havlat took matters into his own hands to seal the deal for San Jose.  In a mad scramble in front of Detroit’s net Havlat took the puck and used his dangling skills to wrist it past Ian White who was trying play secondary netminder while Howard was laying on his back.  HP Pavilion crowd managed to blow the roof off in celebration of San Jose’s continued dominance over The Red Wings.   Since being traded to San Jose from Minnesota, this has been by far Martin Havlat’s best game in Teal.  If The Sharks can do this down the stretch and believe in themselves, they could capture another division banner and the third seed in the Western Conference Playoff race.