Kissing your sister is unAmerican

Go Sharks! The immortal call of the bandwagon sharks fan, Ralph Barbieri. Listening to Ralph pump the sharks on a daily basis got me to thinking of why this team, that has been quite successful over the past several seasons, doesn't get more love from the Bay Area. All the other local professional sports teams suck as much as being O. J. Simpson's publicist. So why can't the sharks get any respect in the Bay Area? Our local papers don't carry them. The local newscasts, if there is time after covering the Raiders, 49ers, Warriors, and off-season stories on the Giants and A's, will mention, in passing, whether the Sharks won or lost and if you're lucky, a score. Even comcast sports will push the shark's games to alternative stations so that they can show another awe-inspiring Warriors collapse. The sharks are the bay area's red-headed step child that fell down the well. Lassie's barking, but nobody cares. Why?

I'm not saying this is the whole issue, but get rid of all the rules around the points system. The NHL vanquished the most horrible, dreadful, kissing your sister outcome of the TIE in 2005-2006, but instituted a confusing and non-American 2-point, 1-point, no-point standings system. What is this system? 1-point just cause you tried real hard and made it to overtime. Is that like taking the fat girl home? This is not Europe. Go away with your soccer standings. In America, we win or we lose(shhhh.....I know the NFL has ties, but pretend you're all Donovan McNabb for the next few minutes). We don't get points for that win. We get a "W". If we lose, we get an "L". We don't need to do any fancy math like subtraction and multiplication to see where we are in the standings. We have a nice column that says GB. If that number is 5, then we need to win 6 more games than the team ahead of us and then we are ahead of them. Simple.

Think quick.... the sharks are ahead of the Ducks in the standing by 5 points with 5 games to go in the season. How many possible outcomes can their be over those next 5 games that allow the sharks to be in first, the ducks to be in first, or for them to be tied for first? Makes my brain hurt.

Now, the Giants are ahead of the Dodgers by 3 games with 4 to play and the announcer tells you that the Giants magic number is 2. OK, ok. You get it. The fact that we can even have a "MAGIC" number automatically makes our system better. Who doesn't like magic?

The NHL needs to do away with the 1pt,2pt,0pt crap and go to W's and L's like the Big 3. NHL overtime should be played like the playoffs. A full period of 5 on 5 hockey played to sudden death, not 4 on 4 for 5 minutes then a shootout. If you don't score that period then you play another one. Yes, there will be times when the games will run deep into the night, but isn't that what makes the NHL playoffs so great. A MLB game can theoretically last forever, but at the start of the 10th inning the defense isn't forced to remove their shortstop and they sure as hell aren't going to start the 12th with a home run derby.

I was 14 years old the night I became a hockey fan when I stayed up to watch Kelly Hrudey make 73 saves and Pat LaFontaine fire a shot past Bob Mason in the 4th overtime period of Game 7 of the Capitals-Islanders series. April 18th 1987, the Easter Epic. The Capitals didn't get a point that night and the Islanders won a series and a fan for life.