SAN JOSE — The street party started outside the Shark Tank hours before San Jose's playoff opener against the Calgary Flames. The anticipation was palpable; the mood high; the feeling clear — that this, finally, was going to be the Sharks' year to win the Stanley Cup.
Everybody said so, didn't they?
Sadly for the Sharks faithful, they didn't reckon with a spirited, ultra-physical Flames team, or the unlikely scoring heroics of Stephane Yelle.
Yelle, who managed all of three goals in 74 regular-season games, scored twice on Tuesday night, to lead the Flames to a 3-2 win over the Sharks in the first game of their best-of-seven Western Conference quarter-final.
Jarome Iginla and Stephane Yelle are congratulated by teammate Daymond Langkow. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
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Twice, the refereeing tandem of Kelly Sutherland and Don Koharski deferred to the NHL hockey operations department in Toronto to determine if Yelle's goals were scored legitimately. Guess that happens when you score as infrequently as Yelle does.
On the first, Yelle redirected a waist-high flip shot from Robyn Regehr past Sharks goaltender Evgeni Nabokov. But was it scored with a high stick? No, ruled the NHL war-room, giving Calgary a 1-0 lead only 2:47 into the game and silencing, for a moment anyway, the rabid capacity crowd.
After Dion Phaneuf and Ryan Clowe traded goals 49 seconds apart later in the first, the teams settled down to banging bodies and playing the aggressive brand of hockey that both had promised.
It stayed 2-1 until the Flames' Jarome Iginla — sporting a weird new playoff haircut that is part afro and part Mohawk - chipped a puck past Sharks defenceman Brian Campbell towards the end of an engaging, hard-fought second period. Iginla fended off Campbell all the way down the ice, once getting knocked to the ice and getting back on his feet without missing a stride.
Eventually, Campbell carried Iginla into the net, where the goal rode up, but did not go off its pegs. Yelle, following up on the play, slipped the puck through a mass of bodies into the net.
On the game winner, Iginla said: "Well, Campbell had it on the point and he's such a good offensive D-man. You know he's going to look us off a lot of times. I just happened to guess right there. I ended up getting lucky and poking it at just the right time. Then, going up the ice, I was just trying to beat him up the ice and draw a penalty and keep the puck going forward. Then I was in and got a shot off; got pushed into the net. Before, I even turned around, Yeller was already celebrating.
"It was a good break that the net ended up staying on. I knew it was going to be close. It was a bang-bang play. On the bench, they were pretty sure — but they weren't certain."
For Yelle, a former Stanley Cup champion with the Colorado Avalanche, it was his 148th playoff game.
"I really don't care that they reviewed both goals," said Yelle. "As long as the ref points towards centre-ice, I'm happy."
Yelle's second goal gave the Flames a two-goal cushion and stood up as the eventual game-winner. Clowe made it interesting at the end, scoring his second of the game with 57 seconds remaining on the clock and Nabokov on the bench for an extra attacker, but that was as close as the Sharks would get in a glorious and frantic finish.
Flames goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff, a perennial Sharks killer ever since San Jose traded him to Calgary, gave up a goal on his first shot — to Clowe — and then held the fort.
"I'm encouraged by how hard we played," said Sharks coach Ron Wilson. "We've got to make Kipper's job harder. You saw the way Ryan Clowe played. He went hard to the front of the net, got six or eight shots. We need more guys going to the front of the net and keep Kipper inside the paint. We're capable of doing that. We just didn't do it consistently. Kipper made a lot of great saves, but we can be more determined in front of the net."
Phaneuf's first-period power play goal, on a deft feed from Iginla, accounted for the other Calgary goal.
At the top end of their respective rosters, the Flames and Sharks are virtual mirror images of one another, with an MVP candidate at forward (Iginla, Joe Thornton), an elite defenceman (Phaneuf, Campbell) and an established high-end goaltender (Kiprusoff, Nabokov). In goal and on defence, the Flames stars outshone their San Jose equivalents.
Phaneuf, who'd struggled in playoffs past, carried his strong regular-season finish into last night's game. He was a target all night — for the Sharks fore-checkers and for the capacity crowd of 17,496, who were booing him the way they used to jeer Theo Fleury in his Flames heyday.
Phaneuf led all Flames defencemen in ice time at just under 29 minutes, as coach Mike Keenan used his sixth defenceman, David Hale, sparingly. It was the same up front, as tough guy right winger Eric Godard received only three shifts all night. Instead, Keenan double-shifted Iginla and to a lesser degree, Owen Nolan, on the right side and both turned in excellent performances. San Jose's most effective forward was Clowe, the likeable Newfoundlander, who only returned for the final four games of the regular season after undergoing major knee surgery back in the fall.
The two teams meet again here tonight in the second game of the series.
"We knew they'd push us hard," said Yelle, "and we knew we had to push back.
"Playoffs are a long grind. You need bounces, you need luck and you need everyone to play and to chip in once in a while. That's a big key to getting far in the playoffs."
It was a highly spirited, wholly entertaining game, with a high tempo throughout. Normally that would favour the younger, speedier Sharks, but with only a couple of exceptions, the Flames did a reasonably good job of keeping up. Cory Sarich had a difficult, mistake-filled night on defence, but Kiprusoff — as is his habit — was usually there to bail him out, including a breakaway save on Thornton early in the third that could have changed the momentum back in San Jose's favour.
"We know what a good year they had, but in our dressing room, we feel we match up well against them and we can beat them," said Iginla. "At the same time, we totally know they're a good club and we respect them. It's tough, but it should be. From our point of view, we're not trying to prove anything. We want to win."
By The Numbers
2 — Playoff goals scored by Stephane Yelle, doubling his output in 13 games over the previous two post-seasons.
56 — Times the Sharks opened the scoring this season, an NHL high. Last night, they fell behind 2-0 in fewer than six minutes.
38 — Consecutive saves by goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff after allowing a goal on the first shot he faced.
2
