The view from San Jose

With last night’s victory, the San Jose Sharks moved ahead of the Kings for fourth place in the Western Conference and second place in the Pacific Division. (Idle St. Louis also passed the Kings for fifth place.) Here’s how David Pollak of the San Jose Mercury News presented last night’s game, followed by some additional quotes from the Sharks’ locker room…

San Jose Sharks’ Devin Setoguchi celebrates birthday with a victory

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COACH TODD MCLELLAN
(on the game…) “To keep that team off the scoreboard was a pretty good accomplishment on our behalf. Halfway through the night, we weren’t happy with our game, but we picked it up in the third, we started to get engaged a little more physically, win a few more battles and found a way to get one.

“There was a shift in the second when Scotty [Scott Nichol] and Jammer [Joe Thornton] and Patty [Patrick Marleau] ended up out on the ice together. They turned the momentum a little bit with a physical shift and we started to play in their end a little bit more. I thought that was the turning point that allowed us to score.”

(on Neimi’s performance…) “The goalie was tremendous. He made some very good saves, especially the first half of the game. He’s been in some very pressure-type situations in his young career, and I thought he looked very comfortable in the net tonight. Our guys realized that halfway through the night and took advantage of it.”

DEVIN SETOGUCHI
(on the game…) “It’s definitely a momentum for the other team when they kill off a 5-on-3 for a full two minutes. I thought as far as the game went, Niemi played a really good game, our defense played a really good game, as far as boxing out and not giving them the second and third opportunities to score the goals in the paint. So credit to our defense when we weren’t playing very well for the first half of the game.”

(on Niemi’s game…) “He’s played great. In Chicago he played really well. He’s a big goalie and he battles for every puck. … He held us in the game. I think we had seven or eight shots, a period and a half into the game, so without that we couldn’t have gotten the boost that we needed in order to get the win.”

DOUGLAS MURRAY
(on the tight Western Conference…) “It’s time to make a push right now. These points are huge and they just get harder and longer as the season goes on.”

(on the game…) “We need to play a lot better than we did tonight. I don’t know how many shots we had after two periods, but that’s not good enough for our team and our talent level. … We still need to find our game, I think. We have to get going and playing better than we are.”