by Larry Leavitt

SAN JOSE–It’s a very exciting time of the year for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the playoffs are a whole new season and the level of play is elevated immensely the question is are they pacing themselves or are they going all out probably the most interesting thing in watching a lot of playoff hockey in the east coast and west coast is the action after the whistle a lot of late hitting that the refs are letting go.

As long as it doesn’t get too out of hand they’re just kind of breaking up the scrums and getting back into what they were doing. They are calling the penalties, they are being very tight with the penalties, if it’s an obvious penalty their calling it, but their not calling the late shots after the whistle which is kind of interesting and the league had something to do with that.

The officials don’t want to control the game as far as the outcome they want to control the game as fair as possible, if they call it in the first period, or the second period, they want to be calling it in the third period. It doesn’t matter which team does the offense as long as their consistent with the calls that’s what the teams want, that if they keep skating and their pushing the play the Sharks do their share and not go and take a lot of penalties because their going to be in control of the puck if your in control of the puck your usually not taking a lot of penalties.

The only thing that has surprised with the officiating is all the after whistle scrums, after the whistles you get some scrums and in those scrums you see a lot of crosschecking, a lot of elbowing, a lot of sticks up high, and their not calling that, which if their not going to call that it’s fine it’s consistent and that’s what they want. It’s just no one should get hurt by it.

The trip to L.A. won’t change the culture of the Sharks who play the Kings and the Sharks play a very similar type of game if they show up. Obviously the Kings didn’t show up in the first and second period of game one, the question is what happened in game two? The Sharks let two goals in and the Kings goalie Jonathan Quick in the first period stopped some amazing shots as the Kings went into the first intermission with the lead.The Sharks came right back and cut the lead on the Kings in the second period.

When the Sharks held a five goal lead in game one it’s to be expected they would try and protect the lead and if they can just show the teams that they can play a pure 60 minute game and not take their foot off the gas no matter what the score then the Kings are going to have a little bit of a worry in the back of their minds. Give the Kings credit they got to the Stanley Cup Finals and the Kings have some great fans and it’ll be noisy in their building too.

Many, many players have said it’s very tough to play at the Shark Tank in the NHL they all envy the Sharks for having a great arena and more importantly the loud crazy fans that just go wild for them and the SAP is a tough place to play for a visiting team. The Kings are prepared for the noisy crowds but they still have to come out and play their game.

The Kings who didn’t do that in the first and second periods of the first game and the Kings played much better defense in the first period of game two on Sunday night taking a 2-0 lead into the intermission and it could be reflective of what happens in the rest of the playoffs and the Kings want to play consistent defense or at least a whole lot better than they were in first period of the first game. Either way these playoffs can go to anyone of these teams.

Larry Leavitt does Sharks commentary each week on Sportstalk