Memo to the eight teams still alive in the Stanley Cup play-offs: Whatever you do, do not take any more 2-0 leads. Really, it's for your own good.

Last night, the San Jose Sharks looked quite comfortable with their 2-0 lead on the Detroit Red Wings - the lead they held with just one minute remaining in the second period. As in any other game in any other sport, there will be several plays during the course of a contest that define where it is going to go. Whether a team gets momentum from a lucky bounce or wilts in the face of a dagger-in-the-heart bad break will often decide victory and defeat.

The Sharks' second goal came when Marcel Goc's seemingly-harmless shot bounced off the helmet of a Wings defender and looped past the stranded Dominik Hasek. Ordinarily, that would serve as a turning point in most games. Despite the fact that Detroit bossed most of the action over the first two periods, the Sharks rarely seemed threatened. Even when Detroit fashioned a clear-cut chance, Sharks goalie Evgeni Nabokov was there to repel them. Once Goc's goal went in, surely the feeding frenzy for San Jose was to follow.

However, Detroit's apparent weakness - the fact that many on their roster were born in time to read the first print run of The Odyssey - turned into a strength in Game 4. Experienced players tend to be able to recover from unlucky plays better than their younger colleagues. Sure enough, the Wings' senior citizens maintained the pressure on Nabokov, and fashioned a turning point of their own.

Possibly the worst thing that can happen to a team is to concede a goal in the first or last minute of the period. A goal against right out of the gate sets the tone for the entire 20 minutes, while a goal in the dying embers of the stanza forces the team to trudge to the locker room and think about it for the entire intermission.

Tomas Holmstrom, back from an eye injury sustained in the first round against Calgary, showed that he's recovered quite nicely by batting a rebound out of mid-air. Nabokov's lunge was in vain, and Detroit seized the initiative heading into the final period. All throughout the third period, San Jose's defensive efforts increasingly took the shape of a desperate team clinging to the precipice by their fingernails rather than the calm they exhibited prior.

Sure enough, the Red Wings did it again. With just 34 ticks left on the clock, Robert Lang took advantage of miscommunication by Sharks defenders to slot in the equalizer. Once the game went to overtime, anyone watching these play-offs knew the script - another 2-0 lead would be squandered (it's not just San Jose that suffers from this malady - Vancouver blew their own 2-0 lead the night before). In that respect, Mathieu Schnieder's power-play goal was almost inevitable.

A quick word about that, though. Detroit got that power-play on a delay-of-game penalty - a penalty for the heinous crime of accidentally shooting the puck over the sideboards. The fact that this is worth two minutes in the sin bin is arguably the worst rule in all of organized sports, and only the continued idiocy of the NHL would see it still on the books after this season.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa Senators staved off the New Jersey Devils in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the 3-2 score. Ottawa now leads the series 3-1, and hopefully they can send the boring old Devils home for good in Game 5.

The Sens got goals out of their big guns - Daniel Alfredsson and Dany Heatley. They are a skilled team across the board, but they aren't spectacular at any one facet. In order for them to have a prayer against the winner of the New York-Buffalo series, they will have to continue to get production from those two, while hoping that goaltender Ray Emery doesn't turn back into a pumpkin.

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