by Larry Leavitt

SAN JOSE–It’s like San Jose Sharks goaltender Alex Stalock said your not going to have a blow out three game lead in these Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings are going to adjust their A game. The Kings came out flat the first time but their not going to come out flat often. It was amazing the execution played by the Sharks in game one and the lack of play by the Kings.

The best way to describe how the Sharks sucess have come on in the last few weeks of the regular season and in game one in one word is wow, wow, wow, they played a number of one goal games that were close games and obviously the Kings didn’t show up and don’t get me wrong the Sharks executed and they executed good. The best sign of the whole game was that they got good scoring from all lines.

If your going to win Stanley Cups you need scoring from all four lines and everybody went out there and played every shift for the Sharks in game one and when you have a five goal lead going into the third period it could be easy to sit back and say, “let’s protect this lead” and that’s when you get into trouble. If the Sharks continue to play third periods like that their going to get into trouble.

It’s easy to play a 60 minute game and a commanding game all the way through and if the Sharks can do that for 15 more games their going to be hoisting the cup. The Kings however in that third period caught up to the Sharks defensive zone strategy and they capitalized scoring three times. The Sharks instead of being agressive and attacking they became defensive and were not executing their defensive game like what they had earlier in the game.

So the bottom line is the Sharks need to stay agressive and keep attacking and you don’t have to keep worrying about your defensive game it will play itself out. So part of a good defense is having the puck and if you have the puck on the offensive zone that’s your defense.

You don’t have to have worry about the team scoring at the other end if you control the puck on the offenisve zone it’s a chess match and generally its a game of inches and San Jose came out with that big win but boy the Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick didn’t look as good as he could have been and it’s not his fault one of those goals were secondary shots that didn’t get cleared on the rebound.

Don’t expect this series to be a blow out, the only thing surprising is that all the NHL games for the Stanley Cup have been high scoring there have been a lot of goals scored. These are the best 16 teams in the league and the scores are pretty high. There not 2-1 or 1-0 games, there’s a lot of scoring which the fans like and teams just work for it. Normally games between the Sharks and the Kings are two or three goal games.

Larry Leavitt does Sharks commentary each week for Sportstalk radio