Here's todays sports news...

The Sharks begin their Western Conference Semi-finals matchup with the Detroit Red Wings on the road at the Joe Lewis Arena tonight. The Wings played the Calgary Flames in Round 1. The series was tightly played, with the Wings ultimately prevailing over the Flames through their forward depth, better transition game, and (somewhat surprisingly) better team speed as the series went on. Mikka Kiprusoff, the Flames netminder, couldn't hold off the Wings offense forever, and Kipper was the only real hope the Flames had to take the series. ...

The Sharks dispatched the Mustard Men in 5 games, which makes the series seem a lot less close than it was. 3 of the games were decided by one goal, with Game 1 in double overtime. Even Game 2, the Predators 5-2 win, was not decided until late in the 3rd period. Nashville's undisciplined play (they led all playoff teams with almost 30 minutes of penalties per game) was their undoing, even though the Sharks power play was more or less ineffective, and often frankly ugly to watch. But it was one more way to wear down the Nashville defenders, and keep their skill players on the bench. Patrick Marleau again scored some big goals, and Joe Thornton took the first step toward erasing his playoff-choker reputation with dominating play and 6 points in the series. Nashville wasn't the only team to distinguish itself with dirty play in this year's playoffs. The Calgary Flames managed to steal the spotlight by having their backup goalie come in to play lumberjack to the Detroit Red Wings Johan Franzen's, umm, old growth redwood late in Game 5 of their series (Franzen, fittingly, scored the series winner in Game 6). Then the Flames' Jarome Iginla and Daymond Langkow got in the act late in the game (cross-checking plus slashing and sucker-punching, respectively). Classy. Brad May of the Anaheim Ducks got a 3 game suspension for sucker-punching the back of Minnesota Wild defenseman Kim Johnsson (who is both emphatically not a pugilist, and happened to be Minnesota's best D man), which then caused a multi-player dust-up between the Ducks and Wild during the *pre-game skate* of Game 5 in their series. ...

Here's todays sports wrapup...

-Warriors get beat down by the Clips, 103-90. Considering the Clippers are one of the teams that the Warriors need to pass in order to make the playoffs, that's a bad loss. -Stanford loses to UCLA, making them an official "bubble team" and Cal loses to USC making them an official .500 team. -The bad news: Sharks lose to Calgary. The good news: their round trip is over. Also, they didn't get in any ten......

Chiefs 20 Raiders 9- We didn't watch this game, we didn't listen to this game, we didn't even know this was a game. It wasn't until we went to SFGate did we realize the Rai-duhs lost another game. Your totals: three interceptions, two fumbles, four sacks, and 307 total yards. The Chiefs even went for it on fourth-and-more-than-one-yard a couple of times just because they could. At this rate, the Raiders are one game away from having one of the Top 10 worst offenses since 1978. And which is worse- the O line or the QB?...

-Three fires raged in Rockridge last night and police think it's all due to arson. What the hell is going on in Oakland these days? -Former HP head honcho, CEO Carly Fiorina, can't understand why she was fired and replaced by a bunch of people who just got indicted. We would imagine that would kind of hurt, but we're also pretty sure all the millions she got as a buy out would probably ease some of that pain. ...

The Philip Anschutz owned San Francisco Examiner announced yesterday that current Executive Editor Vivienne Sosnowski is replacing John Wilpers as editor-in-chief at the Washington Examiner. Malcolm Kirk, present editor-in-chief of the Calgary Herald, will replace Sosnowski at the Examiner. There's not a lot out there on Kirk (wouldn't it be cool if this was him?), and believe us, we've searched. Anyone out there know anything about this guy? How does the Herald compare to......

Yesterday the San Jose Sharks re-signed its head coach and two assistant coaches to new multi-year contracts....