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Rob Blake knows the Shark can play better, it's a matter of what they are able to do about it. "They look quicker right now," Blake said of the Blackhawks. "But we can be quicker, too, getting out of our zone and moving the puck." As he notes, though, the Sharks are greatly assisting in that effort. The most discouraging statistic from the first two games of the series is that our beloved Los Tiburones have been credited with 40 puck giveaways to Chicago's 15. Meanwhile, the Sharks have actually been credited with more puck take-aways, 22-16. Granted, those numbers can be subjective to the whim of home statisticians, much like turnovers and steals in basketball. But they seem accurate in this case. And they suggest that the Blackhawks are not so much pilfering the puck from the Sharks as the Sharks are being too careless when trying to move it from zone to zone.

Taylor Hall isn't viewed by Central Scouting as the No. 1 prospect, but he has a chance to become the first player in history to be named Memorial Cup MVP twice. At some point does scouting and projecting and everything else have to take a back seat to three obvious points? 1. Taylor Hall is a winner. Winners are currently in short supply around here. 2. Taylor Hall has character. Players with character are not exactly numerous in the Oilers organization. 3. Taylor Hall goes to the net and the tough areas of ice. Players who go to the net and tough areas of the ice are few and far between in Edmonton.

The league's best player? With an 11-game (and counting) point-scoring streak, tying a Blackhawks franchise record, and a string of dominating physical performances in which he simply refuses to be moved off the puck or denied in a one-on-one battle, Jonathan Toews is two victories away from a shot at winning a Stanley Cup, a playoff scoring title and a Conn Smythe, to go with a world junior, a world championship, and an Olympic gold medal, all by the age of 22. Oh, and he was voted the top forward at the Olympics, where he played so much bigger than his 6-2, 210-pound frame.

A list of signings-gone-awry to his credit, Kevin Lowe wants to take the Oilers back a few years. "We've got to get back to our basic principles of drafting and development, get out of the free agent business." Of course, many Oilers fans have been saying this for several years now. But it was good to hear Lowe say it. Lowe went on to say: "It just seems to be in recent NHL history that the only way you become a contender is you have to go to the back of the bus for a while and regroup. We had a pile of injuries this year to key players and in some respects, having been at this for 10 years now, it's a blessing in disguise.

A building with the seventh-highest capacity in the league, one sitting "on the edge of the Everglades," wasn't working for the Panthers. "Our building is just too big," team president Michael Yormark said Wednesday. "It would be too big for a lot of teams in the league." With the team failing to make the playoffs in the past decade, on most nights, a large number of seats sit empty during home games. Now, they'll just be covered up. The arena will hold 17,040 for most games.

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