by Larry Leavitt

DALY CITY–For the San Francisco Bulls this will be their fifth staight game against the Stockton Thunder they won the first game, they lost the next two and they won Friday night and the game was in Stockton. Which on Friday night the ice was painted by kids I don’t know if I would have done it for a regular season game but maybe a pre season game.

It worked for the Bulls they won and they got the win with a brand new player and it really made a big impact on the team. The Bulls have been getting good protection from the guys up front and also it starts with good goaltending. If you got good strong goaltending you got good strong defense with your forwards and your speed is off the defense. I’m a firm believer in that and good goaltending can work for any hockey team.

It’s back on the road again for the Bulls as they head to Ontario and I don’t envy them having to play Stockton because you know that Stockton is going to want to win the tie breaker and then they have to go onto Ontario for a game Sunday for a 3PM game.

It’s tough on players, it’s tough on everybody the Ontario people probably hoped that the Bulls played their Saturday night game into overtime and that the Bulls would show up to the rink in Ontario exhausted Sunday. That’s what minor leauge hockey is about you put in your time, you put in your dues and hopefully you get called up and finally show your worth it.

San Jose Sharks update: As we speak the Sharks have more guys ending up on the injured reserved list and Tommy Wingels is the latest victim who went head first into the boards the other night and skated one more shift after that shift after that he was done. It’s an upper body injury. The Sharks are not a team to let people know how important an injury is.

The feel good story of the year is center Bracken Kearns who got called up in his eighth NHL game besides playoffs he got his first goal and he backed it up with his second goal in his second game and his third goal in his third game in a row. This has to be a real good story for Kearns.

The Sharks have been hammered by injuries and with all these players out with all these injuries its going to be tough to get through it, the Olympic break is going to be a big help for the Sharks. So far for the Olympic break Joe Pavelski has been picked for the Olympic games. You have to figure Annti Niemi will be representing Finland and Logan Couture will be representing Canada.

Can you imagine if they got Joe Thornton with Brett Burns out there with one of the other great Canadians players that would be incredible. Burns may not be as popular of the candidates but if not there are so many great players. Somebody is going to be disappointed and Bobby Ryan is disappointed some of his players didn’t make it but you can pick so many.

Larry Leavitt covers pro hockey for Sportstalk Radio