SIGNATURE VICTORY
Baker’s goal lifted visiting Sharks past Red Wings in Game 7 of ’94 first-round series
This story was originally published on April 30, 1994.
SAN JOSE >> Maybe it was quiet around 7:15 p.m. in the recesses of Almaden Valley or the culde-sacs of Berryessa. News can travel slowly to the hinterlands.
But at the intersection of West Santa Clara and Autumn streets, me and my 5,639 closest friends were whooping it up. Yelling. Honking horns. Waving fists in the air. All of us grinning as if Ed McMahon had just showed up at the front door with a check showing lots of zeroes.
But Ed McMahon wasn’t responsible for the lunacy. It was Arturs Irbe and Jamie Baker and the rest of the Sharks. Goodbye, Detroit, it’s been real. Hello, Toronto.
The Sharks opened the doors of San Jose Arena for a second playoff road game Saturday and this time it produced the desired result: big goals, big saves and a 3-2 victory to celebrate.
There are still three more rounds of hockey playoffs before a Stanley Cup winner is crowned, but make no mistake: This victory was a very big deal and the crowd inside reacted accordingly. A tight — no, make that taut — game reduced the need for all the distractions fans sought during the 7-1 pasting in Game 6. No wave, for example.
This was more for this franchise than an upset. Until now, much of the rest of the hockey universe has considered San Jose a curiosity, a bad team turned mediocre that “slipped into the playoffs” as the Associated Press stories out of Detroit kept repeating.
Fair enough, if you haven’t been paying close attention. But beating Detroit makes us, gulp, a force to be reckoned with.
Pretty heady stuff, I know. I shouldn’t get carried away too far.
Nah, I’ll worry about that tomorrow.
You want a sense of the intensity inside San Jose Arena during the final 20 minutes of action? Pull up a chair alongside Jon and Monica Lobo as they watch one of the TVs in the arena club.
Monica, 28, a special education teacher, says her husband is an addict. “We come to the games, then he goes home and stays up till 2 in the morning watching it on tape.” Doesn’t everyone?
But if Jon is the serious hockey fan in the family, Monica is no slouch.
“Oh my God!” she cries out as Irbe follows the puck into the corner, leaving the net open just as Red Wings arrive on the scene.
“Get it out of there!” she instructs a Sharks defenseman late in the period when the team is struggling to get the puck out of its own end.
Jon, 30, a drafting manager, doesn’t talk to the TV as much. He just narrows his eyes on the screen as if he were the one who had to stop a Paul Coffey wrist shot.
There is a break in the action and they consult one another, then tell a story. Last week was their first anniversary and they stayed overnight at the downtown Hilton — along with the Red Wings.
An elevator ride with Sergei Fedorov was the highlight. “I touched him on the arm,” says Monica, a bit sheepishly.
Back to the game. With 31 seconds left, Jon starts to smile.
“We’re on the verge of beating ... ,” but he doesn’t let himself finish the sentence.
The game ends. Big embrace. Then they join the larger crowd inside the arena bowl for a communal moment of hockey madness.
It spills out into the streets and eventually one segment moves downtown. And while other civic celebrations conjure up images of overturned cars, this is the image I’ll take with me from the Sharks’ historic first playoff series win:
Two women, in perfect synchronization, chomping their way across Market Street while I was stopped at the red light.
P.S. If you were waiting for the outcome of this series before deciding whether to jump on the Sharks bandwagon, the fire marshal says there’s simply no more room.
No, no. Only kidding.
But really, you don’t want to wait any longer.