Well, we knew it was a possibility, but it's still a little sad: Those baby swans at the Palace of Fine Arts we told you about on Wednesday appear to have been consumed by a turtle, owl, or big-mouth fish.

The two young swans, who hatched a week ago today, had managed to duck their own demise once by emerging even after their caretaker had swapped their mom's eggs for some ceramic look-alikes to keep her from reproducing. However, it appears that there are things in the world more ruthless than a couple of pottery eggs, as the cygnets disappeared late this week, likely the meal of a bigger, badder animal in the area, the Chron reports.

Though Palace of Fine Arts swans have been slain by the hand of man in the past, Gayle Haggerty, their caretaker, seems to believe that this time the culprit is a natural predator. "I don't think it's foul play," Haggerty told the Chron (which admirably restrained itself from any "foul/fowl" puns). "It's a dangerous time for (the cygnets)."

In any case, Haggerty and her colleagues would have had to find the young swans somewhere else to go relatively soon, as by this time next year, their dad, named "Blue Boy," would have tried to kill them. It's hard out there for a young swan!

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.

By Ian, contributing

Lots of sports today

Warriors 120 Blazers 98- Okay, let's put this in perspective, the last time the Warriors made the playoffs was thirteen years ago. This is what the world was like back then:

Shannon Doherty was about to be kicked off "Beverly Hills 90210"
"Real World San Francisco" aired
Pulp Fiction was released
Biggie and Tupac were still alive and Kurt Cobain was alive for everything but the tail end of the season
People were into Ace of Base
Netscape Navigator was introduced
OJ got into his buddies' Bronco and all hell broke lose.

Man, those were good times.

Sharks 3 Predators 2- The Sharks took a 3-1 lead in the first round of the playoffs with one of those games were everything was in sync. They attacked on offense, banged some heads, and had great goaltending to win their second game in a row. In the game, Milan Michalek scored two goals and Nabokov made twenty-three saves to get the win.

Baseball after the jump

So, backup to before Monday night, before Game 3. Two games into the series, two key Sharks
players injured and brought off the ice on two dirty hits. Scott Hartnell got a game misconduct in game 1 for elbowing and then kneeing Jonathan Cheechoo. In Game 2, rookie and budding Shark hunter Alexander Radulov checked Steve Bernier from behind, earning himself a game misconduct and a one game suspension. Clearly the Predators were paying attention to last year's Sharks-Oilers series in the second round, when Raffi Torres ran Milan Michalek in Game 3 after the Sharks were up 2-0 in the series. Michalek was knocked out of the playoffs, and the Sharks lost four straight to join him. Torres' hit wasn't penalized, and the Sharks ompletely collapsed.

In Game 2, the Sharks seemed to react similarly to the Bernier hit, never really getting their game back and losing 5-2. That evened the series 1-1, with games 3 and 4 back in San Jose.

So, we here at Fishmonger Central were concerned before Game 3, and eager to see how the Sharks responded and adjusted. The Predators have pretty well neutralized the Sharks power-lay, which was one of the best during the regular season. Nabokov has played reasonably well at times, but also let in some bad, untimely goals.

By Ian, contributing

The Predators had a quietly outstanding season this year, going 51-23-8 for 108 points, despite playing to sparse crowds at home, and wearing Grey Poupon-colored uniforms. Their trade-deadline deal for Peter Forsberg added yet another scoring forward to a line-up that includes Paul Kariya, diminutive speedster Scott Sullivan, J.P. Dumont, David Legwand, and Martin Erat. Their D is mobile and skilled, led by the hilariously named Kimmo Timonen (just say it out loud without smiling, we dare you), Marek Zidlicky (ditto), and Shea Webber (2 out of 3 ain't bad).
In goal, Tomas Vokoun had another excellent year, and his "backup", Chris Mason, is their 2nd
goalie in the same way that Vesa Toskala is the Sharks' backup.

By Ian, contributing

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.