Sharks Take The Pacific Division With A 6-1 Thumping Over The Kings

Added on Apr 05, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

It wasn’t 4 days ago when the San Jose Sharks clinched their slot in the playoffs for the 7^th straight season, and now its time to celebrate again. The Sharks captured their fourth consecutive Pacific Division crown by dismantling the Los Angeles Kings in a 6-1 victory. To add insult the injury, the Sharks prevented the Kings from securing their playoff spot with the win.

Sharks Captain Joe Thornton was happy with the win, but they still haven’t reached the goal they wanted yet with regular season. “You want to win your division so you get home ice, obviously. We’ve got a pretty darn good division, so it’s a feather in your cap, but we’ve still got some work to do. We’re fighting to get that second seed. It’s a good step for us, though.” Currently, the Sharks can do no worse than the 3 seed in Western Conference, and with 103 total points they moved back ahead of Detroit by one point for second place.

Sharks coach Todd McLellan said every little thing helps in the playoffs, and home ice is big. He said “That’s the benefit, not the banner or anything else. The benefit is we know we’ll be in the two or three spot and as the playoffs roll around we’ll get the opportunity to start in front of our great fans. We worked hard to earn that right. Now we have to take advantage of it when it does arrive.”

Kings coach Terry Murray said he was expecting more from his team in a game that was this important, and everyone knew they had to play hard. He said “When you come into this building, you know you have to play good. You’ve gotta show up and compete real hard. We gave up that first goal. We gave up goals I don’t like. You gotta show up against a real good hockey club and play well, and we didn’t do that.”

Kings defenseman Matt Greene said the Sharks do what they always, they play good hockey. He broke it down by saying “They came ready to play. Obviously we didn’t. That was right off the drop of the puck. I don’t think that we were playing well in the first period. Again, we were giving them chances to score, and that’s what good teams do. We knew going in that they play a really good game every night, and they’re going to get their offense off whatever you give them.”

Greene also said there was a lesson in this game for the Kings, and its not a bad one to get this late in the year. He said “I think every one of their goals, we gave it right to them. They took advantage of every opportunity they got and filled the net on us. It’s a good lesson, late in the year, that you’re never really as good as you think you are, especially if you’re going to give a good team the opportunity to beat you like we did tonight.”