by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SAN JOSE–The San Jose Sharks improved their home record and overall record on Saturday night beating the fiesty New York Islanders 3-1 at SAP Center. The Sharks are now 7-4-2 and have lost five of their last eight games but are steadily improving with wins over Colorado, Anaheim and the Islanders in their last four games.

The Sharks did lose to the Boston Bruins and the New York Rangers on the road last week and they have to beat teams like that for future reference if they want to climb in the standings and have later success in post season. The Sharks are hard to figure out and we’ve talked about this Ad nauseam they basically haven’nt changed much of anything during the off season.

Todd McCllenlan is head coach and Ron Wilson is at general manager two who survived any personnel changes after the team had that 3-0 lead in last year’s first round playoffs over the L.A. Kings and lost four straight to be eliminated. The players are basically the same with Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Logan Couture, Scotty Hannan and Brett Burns to name a few.

The Sharks should make it to the playoffs this season the question is how far this post season will they go? It’s almost a given this team is going to make it to the playoffs which is funny. This is a funny team too in the sense that they beat Anaheim and Colorado on the road but couldn’t beat the Buffalo Sabers at home. The Ducks are a good club to beat (9-3-0) and in first place in the Pacific Division.

That’s the problem with the Sharks they’re very hard to figure out especially early in the season, the Islanders came into San Jose at 6-4-0 and the Sharks started Saturday night’s game at 6-4-1 and both teams were relatively even and the Sharks wanted to play this game to prove something to themselves, that they can win with the big teams at home and after they pulled away in the third period 2-1 after a 1-1 tie they won it eventually 3-1.

Baseball updates: The Kansas City Royals have backed out of the Billy Butler sweepstakes to Butler’s disappointment he completed an $8 million contract after the World Series and asked the Royals for a raise and a new deal at $12.5 million but Butler was declined on Saturday by the Royals forcing Butler to go shopping elsewhere.

Butler was the best hitter the Royals had in that line up who during the regular season hit .271, scored 57 runs, had 149 hits, 66 RBIs and nine homers. I’m surprised that the Royals turned him down but again that’s a small market team. The Royals were very lucky to make it as far as the World Series and we can say the same about the San Francisco Giants. The Royals only hit 95 home runs during the regular season and Butler added RBI and hit production at the plate so this really comes as a surprise.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is a sports anchor for the Telemundo TV Network and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com

photo credit: insideedge.com