Usually, the sports page is the first thing I read every morning, but this morning, I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to face the truth, that the Sharks’ season really is over. I saw the Sharks’ score and couldn’t read any further. Last night, I kept clicking that browser reload button, but the score never changed. Finally, in the 4th OT period, I went to bed, hoping that the morning would bring me some great news. It did not. It’s weird following a hockey game with just online updates. At least with baseball or football, I can see something happening between scores. With hockey, each reload was followed by a simple check of whether the score changed. And the score did not change for a very long time. This is such a contrast to what I felt Friday night. Owen, Colin and Patti were all asleep while I stayed up in our Carlsbad hotel constantly clicking that reload button. Changes were happening relatively quickly that night. Down 2-0, I had almost given up hope, but then I thought, if this is going to be the last game, I might as well follow through. All of a sudden, it was 2-1 and then 2-2. And before I knew the OT period had started, the Sharks had won 3-2. It took a lot of self control not to jump up and down screaming in delight, not wanting to wake up everyone else in the hotel room that night. At that point, I really started to believe that the Sharks were going to pull off the miraculous comeback, but it was not meant to be. Right now, we can be proud the Sharks fought back in the series and played the Stars very tough in the final game. But when we look back at this loss in a few months, this will be just another second round loss yet again and we’ll wonder why the team always seems to fall short of expectations. Do the Sharks play poor playoff hockey or are expectations always too high? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know the outcome is always disappointing.
