It wasn’t pretty, in reality it was very gritty but the Sharks beat Dallas Wednesday night by using a familiar formula:  Play good D, hope for great netplay and score two goals to win in OT    2-1.  A great play by Marty (The Disappearing 6 million $ Man) Havlat to Tommy Wingels gave San Jose the victory.  Alex Stalock was in net and displayed some catlike reflexes to make some impossible saves to only give up one goal.  Eerily reminiscent of J. Quick, he leapt out at the shooters as they were trying to find a topshelf corner  to consistently stymy  the Dallas shooters.  Ask Jamie Benn, who was robbed over a certain goal by Stalock at point blank range.  He is not at the level displayed by Team USA’s #1 netminder but damn he is good, improving to 8-3 with a miniscule 1.61 GAA.  Niemi better look over his shoulder even though he is still the obvious #1 goalie for San Jose.

Other notable play from Brett Burns, Scotty Hannan (2 assists) and Havlat, who scored the only regulation goal was encouraging, especially from Havlat who hasn’t scored in a long time.  Burnsie was throwing his considerable bulk around often, stapling the Dallas players to the boards numerous times with big hits on hip checks. Not the most prolific offensive display, but I’m sure Sharks fans will take the victory in stride  because the win was so formulaic.  Their gaudy record includes many wins of this sort, by one goal, low scoring and with great D.   Dallas, to their credit has a very solid core of young players like Benn, Tyler Seguin, Valeri Nichushkin and Cody Eakins and personally, I’m glad they are out of the Sharks division because they will be good soon.  Good job San Jose Tiburones, this game had a playoff feel to it and was encouraging from the standpoint of quality chances for the home team even the game was tightly checked and the Sharks were 0-3 on the power play.