SAN JOSE - For the second game in a row, the Sharks overcame a 2-1 deficit to win 3-2 in overtime.

The product on the ice was supposed to look cleaner than Tuesday's opener as big names returned to the lineup, but San Jose's matchup against Arizona on Friday night looked more like a beer league scramble than an NHL scrimmage.

Lack of organization and errant passes marked a game that saw Patrick Marleau, Joel Ward, Paul Martin and Justin Braun lace up for team teal, while Aaron Dell backstopped.

The Sharks once again surrendered the first goal when Arizona's Jordan Martinook beat Dell nine minutes in. Ryan Carpenter scrummed for a score midway through the second, but the Coyotes responded just 33 seconds later with a clean wrist shot from Michael Bunting to give Arizona back the lead at 2-1. 

Tomas Hertl, who had a respectable game along the boards and led all Sharks forwards in ice time, tied the game at two with 13 minutes remaining. Hertl played strong on his skates and fought through several checks in the offensive zone, showing progress as he further separates himself from the knee injury that held him out of most of the Stanley Cup Finals.

In overtime, Melker Karlsson cleaned up a Tommy Wingels offensive-zone faceoff, getting just enough stick on the puck in traffic to chip back to an alert and open Dylan DeMelo between the high circles. DeMelo wasted no time in sharpshooting a wrister over the glove of Coyotes netminder Louis Domingue, sealing another Sharks victory.

DeMelo figures to be a reliable reserve defenseman again this season, building on the 45 games he played in 2015. At 23, the chance that he beats out veteran addition David Schlemko for a spot in the opening night lineup appears marginal, but continuous strong play could make the decision tough for head coach Peter DeBoer. Either way, the blue line depth is a luxury for a team that hasn't had much rest relative to the rest of the league this offseason.

​​​SAN JOSE - The last time the San Jose Sharks played on SAP Center ice, they watched the Stanley Cup skate off in the wrong hands. Despite the team’s best effort to sustain puck possession and neutralize fast breakouts, the depth of Pittsburgh’s speed-first attack proved to be too much to handle.

The loss stung for players and fans alike, but that memory will in time give way to a fonder recollection of the team’s resiliency through four rounds of grueling playoff hockey. The Sharks gave their fans reason to believe that victory was possible every game, in every situation. They proved it in comeback victories against Los Angeles, Nashville and St. Louis, and then again in game three against Pittsburgh in what is now known in the Bay Area simply as “the Donskoi game.”

Flash forward three months, and the same never-die attitude was found alive amongst Sharks prospects during the team’s preseason opener against Vancouver.

Trailing 2-1 late in the third period, mainstay forward Tommy Wingels forced overtime by scoring with 23 seconds left. Minutes later, rookie Kevin Labanc sent fans home happy.

Labanc, a 20-year-old Brooklyn native, also had an assist in the game. The 2014 sixth-round pick was one of several prospects looking to take advantage of the extra ice slots afforded by the World Cup of Hockey’s cut into San Jose’s roster. San Jose led all NHL teams in players participating in the tournament with seven: USA’s Joe Pavelski, Canada’s Brent Burns, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Logan Couture and Joe Thornton, Team Europe's Mikkel Boedker and Finland’s Joonas Donskoi.

Free-agent defenseman pickup David Schlemko stepped up to fill the void, leading all skaters with 23:38 of ice time. The 10-year veteran also assisted on the game-tying and game-winning goals. Meanwhile, fellow defenseman Mirco Mueller struggled through phases of the game. Mueller is expected to be a dependable fill-in on the backend this season and bounce back from a lackluster 2015-16 campaign. It will be interesting to see which way he trends as we approach opening night.

Troy Grosenick played well in net, stopping several tough saves through traffic and off tips, which is exactly what you want to see from someone expected to fill free agent depature James Reimer’s spot as backup. Grosenick played the first half of the game, allowing one goal on eight shots, while 6-4 Lithuanian prospect Mantas Armalis allowed one goal on seven shots in relief.

Vancouver’s Bo Hovart opened scoring 2:06 into the first, while Barclay Goodrow - now sporting number 23 - opened the scoring for the Sharks 14:00 into the second period. Vancouver’s Sven Baertschi gave the Canucks back the lead mid-way through the third before Wingels and Labanc’s heroics.

The Sharks will play host to Arizona on Friday, then rematch the Canucks on Sunday in Vancouver.

​Hayward, Calif. – Derrick Deese ended his first golf fundraiser by handing out praise and thanks, but it could be others thanking him in the long run for his venture into charity.

Deese, a former San Francisco 49ers lineman who started as a rookie on the 1994 championship­­ team, hosted fellow notable Bay Area sports alums like Jerry Rice, Lincoln Kennedy, Lorenzo Neal and Jose Canseco for the Legends of Sports Charity Golf Classic at TPC Stonebrae. Benefitting his own PATCHWorks Foundation - which assists athletes in post-competition life - the full day of golf, silent auction, dinner and raffle was a bread-and-butter fundraiser with the flair of Legends.

These guys know how to have fun.

Take Rice, for example, who would have looked just as comfortable in a nightclub as he did in a tee box, sporting a pair of Nike Airs and a button down. The best NFL receiver of all time literally brought the noise wherever he went. Imagine Rice, with a portable speaker bumping from his cart, hopping out onto a long par 5 and bombing a drive, cigar in mouth, then posing for a few photos before moving on. It was that kind of day.

Canseco displayed a cannon of a drive from the tee as well, as expected from the Bash Brother, but it was former San Jose Sharks draft pick Alex Hult who won the long drive contest. Meanwhile, many of the other athletes and participants partook in enjoying one of Lincoln Kennedy’s El-K cigars while playing their favorite tunes. Even Angela “The Voice of San Jose” Tirado was there to sing the national anthem first thing in the morning, setting off the party-event atmosphere at Stonebrae.

The noise to be paid most attention to, though, was that of Deese at the end of the evening. He began PATCHWorks after watching a viral video of a homeless former NFL player being jumped and receiving no assistance. From then on he took it on his own to make a contribution. Now, PATCHWorks is his outlet to help athletes enduring “physical, emotional, and financial hardships after their careers have ended.” As the PATCHWorks name suggests, Deese thinks there are ways that Paying a Tribute to Chilhood Heroes Works.
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For more information on Deese and his Legends of Sports, visit LegendsOfSports.Org.

The San Jose Sharks pummeled the Nashville Predators on Thursday, 5-0, to advance to the NHL Western Conference Finals.

SAN JOSE - The San Jose Sharks turned in their most dominating performance of the playoffs on Thursday night, routing Nashville 5-0 in the decisive seventh game of their second round series. 

The SAP Center was buzzing even before the opening drop, as the Sharks were riding a four-game home winning streak dating back to Game Four of the Los Angeles Kings series. When Martin Jones led his team through the famous shark head amidst 19,000 screaming fans, the electricity was sensational. San Jose had arrived.

The Sharks had outscored Nashville 13-5 combined in their previous three home games, and struck first midway through the opening frame on the power play. Captain Joe Pavelski scored his ninth goal of the playoffs on a tic-tac-toe play that started above the circle with Joe Thornton, went below the goal line to Patrick Marleau, and finished with a one-timer in the slot. It was a quintessential expression of a Sharks power play unit clicking on all cylinders.

When Joel Ward scored later in the first period to give the Sharks a cushion, they could have called the game then. Logan Couture tacked on a goal before fans had returned to their seats in the second period, and Thornton did the same in the third. Marleau joined in to boost the lead to 5-0, and Jones stopped 12 Nashville shots in the third.
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For the Sharks, the performance was the byproduct of frustrating overtime road losses that extended the series longer than San Jose had planned. In Game Four, a would-be Pavelski goal in the first OT period was waved off due to goalie interference. In Game Six, the Sharks blew a quick 2-0 lead. There would be no guesswork or anxiety in Game Seven, and San Jose’s core group made sure of it.

San Jose defeated Los Angeles on Friday night, 6-3, to advance to the second round of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.

LOS ANGELES - Resiliency.

For four of five games, the San Jose Sharks had it.

For all five games, it was backed by extended displays of dominance.

And for the first time in three tries, the Sharks got past the rival Los Angeles Kings in the playoffs. How they got there, though, was the resiliency to push back.

What San Jose accomplished in defeating the Kings wasn’t shocking. For those who paid close attention to the team’s meteoric rise during the second half of the regular season, it was a continuation of months of dominance that began with Logan Couture’s return from injury. With their second-line center and top penalty killer back in the fold, Head Coach Peter DeBoer stopped shuffling lines and started pushing them, getting names like Chris Tierney and Joonas Donskoi on the tongues of national analysts.

Joe Thornton, in his first season without the captaincy, was slumping in late December along with the Sharks record. Then DeBoer suggested Thornton replace his hockey-first mentality outside of the rink with family time and hobbies. The result? An MVP-worthy second-half output. After the change in approach, Thornton went on a tear that saw him outpace practically everyone in the league on the stats sheet, and even more noticeably saw an improvement on defense that could not be ignored. To see Thornton, the mighty Jumbo Joe, use his powerful strides to routinely chase down puck carriers 15-years younger, then set up goal after goal after goal, was a reminder that the former No. 1 overall pick was still one of the league’s best talents.

Then there was the goal song. Hockey is a momentum sport, and its low-scoring nature means goals should theoretically provide a large boost in momentum, especially at home in front of an active fanbase.

The problem in San Jose was that their goal song was a revolving mess for several seasons after the team wanted to distance itself from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Pt. 2.” Fans complained, management ignored, the team produced one of the league’s worst home records, despite also sporting one of the league’s best home records.

Finally, in March, the team held a fan vote and got one that was easy to cheer with and kept fans loud through the following shift. For an arena that was for years considered the toughest place for visiting teams to visit, this was critical. Seems like a no-brainer, but it helps when fans are loud during and after a goal.

Fixing the ice conditions at SAP Center played another huge step in San Jose becoming the team that just beat down the nationally-favored Kings. Traditionally, ownership waits until late April or May to install a dehumidifier in the building. This season, however, the Bay Area’s weather was so poor for hockey that defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Couture publicly called it “bad” and “garbage.” For a team as skilled as the Sharks, having faster, clean ice for its premier talents would make all the difference in the world, rather than play into a heavy, collapsing team’s (read: LA) hands.

New ice, new song: Improved home record. San Jose went 1-1 at home against the Kings, but they didn’t go 0-2 heading back to LA. What more, they didn’t get dominated or out-coached at home, instead controlling play for large chunks of time.

With killer instinct, San Jose finished the deed on the road in Game Five, 6-3, resiliently powering through a three-goal LA comeback with three straight unanswered goals of their own.
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Powering through injury, mindset, ice conditions or goal songs, San Jose’s resiliency has them prepared to face Anaheim or Nashville in the second round.