After long wait, Sharks anxious for true home opener
When the NHL schedule was unveiled, the weeklong gap between the Sharks' final game in Sweden and the first one in North America looked pretty good as it provided plenty of time to recover from the anticipated jet lag.
Now, however, the wait for Saturday night's true home opener against the Atlanta Thrashers seems about 24 hours too long.
"I think most guys are ready to play tomorrow," assistant captain Ryane Clowe said after Thursday's practice. "On the other hand, I guess they wanted to be sure, and I agree with that. The first three days felt awful. It wouldn't have been good to play."
Todd McLellan also sounded like someone ready for games, not the practice that awaits today.
"As coaches, we're never happy," the Sharks coach said. "If we had to play today, we would have said, 'Jeez, it would have been nice to have one or two more days off.' Vice versa: We don't play till Saturday, and now we're wishing we could play today. There's no perfect scenario."
The Sharks left Stockholm immediately after Saturday night's game for the long flight home but were back on the ice Monday and Tuesday before taking Wednesday off.
"I know they're getting tired of practicing," he said of his players. "We've had two games in about two weeks and a lot of practices. They want to go out and apply it and find out where we're at."
McLellan has been setting up more scrimmages than usual but acknowledged there's no way to create game intensity and speed.
"You're never as physical against your own teammates as you would be against the opposition," he said. "When you're practicing the power play, you have a tendency to let up on a shot because you don't want it to smoke anybody net front."
Veteran Jamal Mayers was the only Shark to skip Thursday's practice as he recovers from an arm injury suffered in a Sept. 28 exhibition game.
That means rookie John McCarthy likely will be taking Mayers' spot at right wing on the fourth line for the second consecutive game after being a healthy scratch in the season opener, when another prospect, Tommy Wingels, got the nod from McLellan. Wingels has since been reassigned to Worcester.
"I try to stay positive about things. It's a long season, and I knew that one game really wasn't going to make a difference," McCarthy said of missing the opener. "I just stayed focused, so that when I do get a chance, I'm going to do everything I can to make the coaches trust me."
McCarthy said linemate Scott Nichol "has been really good about tweaking my game a little bit as far as making the adjustment from the American league to here, just the little things I could do to help my game."
After two games, Clowe leads the Sharks in scoring with three points -- all assists -- and Joe Thornton is the top goal scorer with two. That puts both players in unfamiliar territory.
"Me and Joe, we're switching up." Clowe joked. "I'm going to go for 80-plus assists this year."
Clowe noted that two of his assists were similar, coming on the power play and feeding Logan Couture and Devin Setoguchi at almost identical spots on the ice.
"It was kind of something we've been working on a little bit, so it's nice. Now I'm probably going to have even more with Heater on my line."
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak's Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks . E-mail dpollak@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5940.
