And now for something completely different....hockey!

Calgary Flames 4 Sharks 3- You know, we haven't been paying that much attention to the Sharkies this season. It's not like we don't care (we do), it's just that we know they'll make the playoffs, we just don't know what they’ll do once they get there. The team always plays well in the regular season, gets deemed one of the faves for the Cup, then chokes in the second round. Besides, moreso than any other sport, the best team often doesn’t make it to the finals-- some team gets hot or a goalie gets super hot and the next thing you know, someone's drinking Molson from the cup in some strip club in Edmonton. So, in other words, wake us when the playoffs come.

That being said, the Sharks gave up the tying goal with about .40 seconds left to eventually lose in overtime.

-Oh yeah, we're totally looking forward to today's Roger Clemens congressional hearings. How could you not look forward to it? There's the conflicting testimony provided by his best friend and partner in ass-injecting, a bag full of used hypodermic needles saved by the trainer, and accusations that Clemen’s wife also doped up for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. How could it not be more awesome?

It will be a circus which, actually, is the point of all this. As the kids would say about the Mitchell Report, "There Will Be Blood" and blood there will be. First everyone went after Bonds but once he was brought down, nobody felt satisfied afterwards. So now Clemens is being thrown out to the wolves. And, yes, once this is all over and Clemens gets nailed for lying to congress (which, of course, would be bad because nobody has ever lied to congress) we'll move onto the next victim because that won’t satisfy anyone either. 'Cause nothing will.

In fact, we tried to think about when we had a worse year and came up with maybe 1995 or 1996 when both baseball teams kind of sucked and the Raiders still in LA. But then the 49ers were still great. So then we went farther back and came up with maybe '78 or '77. But then the Raiders and Warriors were kind of good.

Either way, this was still a crappy year. The 49ers, Giants, Warriors, and Raiders were all below .500, the Raiders really below .500. In fact, the Raiders had one of the worst seasons in NFL history. As for the Giants, they appear to be mired in mediocrity as they completed yet another immensely frustrating season. As for the Warriors, they occasionally played exciting baseball but failed to make the playoffs for like the tenth year in a row.

But there was some good news out there. The A's finally broke through and made it to the American League Championship Series where the Tigers effectively smacked them around. The 49ers also looked to be on the rebound as they beat a few playoff teams and showed signs of feistiness. But in keeping with our theme, there's still bad news out there as both teams appear intent on moving, the A's to Fremont and the Niners to Santa Clara.

And, oh yeah, there's the Sharks. The Sharks were (are) one of the best teams in the NHL and made a big-time trade for MVP Joe Thorton but they blew a 2-0 start against the Edmonton Oilers to lose out in the playoffs. Even worse, their fans booed the Canadian National Anthem. Never a classy move.

As we said, not a great year for Bay Area sports.

Anyways, after the jump, the Two Chris's take a look at the sports year.

We sort of knew this was going to happen, but here it is: after officially jumping on the Sharks bandwagon last week, they have now lost three in a row to the Edmonton Oilers, a losing streak that started after the Sharks lost an epic, three OT Game 3. We would take some responsibility for causing the Bad Mojo, but after last night's game, Sharks fans only have themselves to blame for any sort of Bad Mojo, something that will happen when fans of a team boo another country's national anthem.

As the song says, Instant Karma is gonna get you. Or is it the rhythm that's going to get you? We can never quite remember.

Yep, before last night's Game 5, Sharks fans, or more like some Sharks fans as we're quite sure not every Sharks fan is a Yahoo, booed the singing of the Canadian national anthem. Yes, Edmonton is a city in Canada and booing the Canadian anthem is, kind of a way of booing the Edmonton Oilers, but only if you're a complete moron. And once again, it's not the disrespect that gets us, but the stupidity. See, most hockey players are Canadian. Ten of the Sharks are Canadian, including Shark stud and MVP Joe Thorton. Because hockey is the Canadian national sport. So, in other words: no Canada, no NHL. In essence, then, the booing Sharks fans booed the national anthem of the country that is the reason for them being there that night.

And do we even have to mention that Canada gave us Rush? How can anyone boo the country that gave us Rush?

This is the equivalent of going to an Australian Rules Football game and booing the Australian national anthem. Or going to Oktoberfest at Fort Mason and booing the German national anthem. We would say the Sharks are going to find themselves in a pretty riled up crowd when they play in Edmonton tomorrow night, but that's if Canadians are capable of getting riled up about anything.

Of course, the Sharks, in the end, would have nobody to blame but themselves if they lost. In Game 4, they were up 3-1 before giving up five unanswered goals. Then last night, they came from behind to tie it up at 3-3, only to give up three goals in the third period. A team that was playing dead-on, old style hockey suddenly found itself playing dumb and sloppy hockey.

One more game full of dumb and sloppy hockey, and all those San Jose sports fans will have nothing to boo except Arena League Football games and league lacrosse.

We're going to talk about something we rarely talk about-- hockey. Why? Because the San Jose Sharks are now up 2-0 against the Edmonton Oilers in the second round of the playoffs, after winning last night 2-1. The Sharks, who have won six playoff games in a row, won on a game winning goal by MVP candidate Joe Thorton (check out the great video of it from a fan in the stands). Then there's how they did it, winning last night's game despite, incredibly, being down two players in a 5-3 matchup, only to have two of those players lose their sticks, and still-- somehow, inexplicably-- kept the Oilers from scoring for over a minute. That's studly. Even better is the fact that in describing the whole thing, Sharks coach Ron Wilson referenced the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. How can you not give some props to a Monty Python quoting coach?

There was a time when we were actually pretty into hockey, a left over effect of having grown up in Flyers-mad Philadelphia. But somewhere along the line, right around the point we started seeing highlights of a Columbus/Nashville game, we stopped really caring that much. We would, however, get a little interested again around playoff hockey because playoff hockey is a whole other beast entirely, hockey at it's purest and with an intensity that ranks right up there with the Big Three sports, (check out this YouTube video of the Sharks' entrance in Game 4 of the series against the Predators to check out the intensity-- it's right out of a rock conert, a Ronnie James Dio rock concert). Actually, one could even say that playoff hockey has even more intensity than the other sports. In hockey, for instance, a star player would never quit trying half-way through a 7th game to sulk because they know that they will probably be pummeled to death their teammates.

This season, we started to pay mild attention to the Sharks only to see them spend most of the season in a funk, mired in the bottom end of their division. But then they traded for Joe Thorton in one of the best trades the Bay Area has ever seen and the team took off, finishing off as the hottest team in the NHL. So now we're back into it, following along with the team and even checking them out on TV (that is if we could find the OLN network). We're even more into it because this series has been a real humdinger and because the Shark's are winning the way hockey is supposed to be played, old time hockey-like, with much hitting and checking and do-or-die intensity.

In other words, Go Sharks.