Earlier tonite, okay, this morning, the Thrashers somehow managed to play their best period of hockey of this young season on their way to shocking the Sharks and their San Jose faithful with a 4 to 2 victory on Opening Night in the Silicon Valley. The win marked their first ever triumph at the "Tank" in San Jose, and they even did it without any scoring contributions by the red hot Chris Thorburn, who saw his 3-game goal-scoring streak chomped by the Sharks. They certainly were "ridin' dirty" on the bus from Oakland to San Jose as whatever drugs they took before the game finally kicked-in and jump-started their legs for a dramatic and dominant 3rd period performance against the Sharks.
Early on it seemed as if the boys from Blueland would drown in shark-infested waters, but the goaltending of Chris Mason would prove to be the life-preserving force they would need on a night in which nothing seemed to go their way in the early going. Working to overcome an early two-goal deficit, the boys must have been uplifted by Mase's superlative stone-mason efforts as they rallied to score an early 2nd period goal on a short-handed bid by Andrew Ladd (set up by a whirling Bryan Little), and a mid-period goal on a blast by Anthony Stewart from the lower right circle. And I'm not sure who was more stunned: the Thrasher faithful or Sharks' netminder, Antti Niemi!
After two miserable, yet fortuitous, periods in which the Thrashers were blitzkrieged by a battery of Shark-shots -- San Jose outshot Atlanta by a whopping 30 to 13 margin in the first 40 minutes of action -- Coach Ramsay's charges came out of the locker room with their guns a-blazin' and opened up a powder keg of intensity to besiege the Sharks' goal with an onslaught of shots. However, Niemi would prove impregnable until the Thrashers earned their first man-advantage of the nite. On the ensuing power-play, Dustin Byfuglien would swoop down into the heart of the slot to prey upon a loose puck that resulted from a timely Toby Enstrom point shot. "Big Buff" took dead aim and flicked a hard wrist-shot that would easily elude a scrambling Niemi, who could not recover in time after the initial save.
Just prior to that key PP, the Thrashers nearly lost the ground they worked so hard to conquer in the early stages of the third when one of their D-men fell down at the blueline. Sharks' forward Logan Couture would escape his end with the loose puck and a break-away into the Thrashers' zone. But Mason would again save his team by stopping the streaking Couture as he attempted a quick move to his fore-hand only to be thwarted by a pin-balling pad. Later, after the PP goal and momentum was recaptured, Rich "the Pevs Dispenser" Peverley would connect with a hard-charging Evander Kane on a perfect pass through the slot for a slam-dunk deposit of the frozen disc into the Shark net. From there, the two-goal margin would stand as the Thrashers dug in deep to stymie a desperate Sharks' surge over the final 3 minutes of the game.
Now it's back to the bus so they can get on down the road to the airport and a triumphant return to the ATL. Something tells me that a lot of the boys will be hummin' this tune in their heads as they shuffle off from the Shark Tank in San Jose. Can you hear it? I can.
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