ANAHEIM, Calif. — Joe Thornton gave the stew that is social media a good stir when he joined the Sharks for pregame warmups Thursday night.
Thornton, however, was oblivious to the storm that his appearance prior to Game 1 of the Sharks opening-round series with the Anaheim Ducks sparked. He’s made a conscious decision to stay away from Twitter after a brief flirtation with the social media platform in Vancouver “about two years ago.”
“It was about 11 o’clock at night and I went on it because I wanted to check out Beetlejuice’s page from the Howard Stern Show,” Thornton said. “I was like, oh my God, what did I just do? I have to get off this thing.”
pic.twitter.com/inPewBq7jm
— Beetlejuice Green (@Beetlepimp) February 26, 2017
The 38-year old forward said he spent about six minutes on Twitter before he decided to pull the plug. He stays off Facebook, as well.
“I was in full-fledged panic because I started getting all these requests with people following me,” Thornton said. “I phoned (a Sharks public relations director) and said, you’ve got to get me off this thing.
“It got crazy.”
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Deleting Twitter is proving to be a smart decision for Thornton, especially with all the chatter and speculation about his health status for the series. Thornton, who’s recovering from damage to the medial collateral ligament in his right knee, will be sidelined for Game 2 in Anaheim Saturday. He labeled his status for the remainder of the series as “day to day.”
Nevertheless, Thornton is planning to skate in warmups again Saturday. He wants to be out with “the fellows”, get back into his game day routine and see a little more ice time than he receives at the Sharks morning practices.
“I might as well. I’m here, right? There’s ice. Skate,” Thornton said.
2. Corey Perry and Ryan Kesler will be getting some help in playing the villain role Saturday when Kevin Bieksa returns to lineup.
Bieksa, who scored the series-clinching goal against the Sharks in the 2011 Western Conference Final, will be rejoining the Ducks blue line after missing 12 games with a hand injury, replacing Andy Welinski. Cam Fowler remains sidelined by a shoulder injury.
The 36-year-old defenseman will undoubtedly bring even more nastiness to an already-chippy Ducks lineup, along with 85 games of playoff experience.
In Game 1, the Sharks exploited the Ducks third pairing of Welinski and Marcus Pettersson, who entered the series with a combined 29 NHL games under their belts. The downside is that Bieksa isn’t exactly the fleetest of foot, to be friendly, at a time when the NHL is getting faster and faster. The Sharks won the speed game Thursday night, a fact that the Ducks seem to be resigning to by penciling Bieksa into the lineup.
“He’ll give us a little bit more of a rugged (look),” Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle said. “We feel we didn’t do enough impeding their progress. They had opportunities to freely get to our net often.”
Kevin Bieksa on tonight pic.twitter.com/T7QVz5rZz7
— Curtis Pashelka (@CurtisPashelka) April 14, 2018
Translate: the Ducks are going to combat the Sharks speed by trying to goon it up.
“He plays a real-physical game,” Sharks center Eric Fehr said. “He definitely won’t be shying away from hits. He plays a playoff style of game.”
3. The Sharks saw the “big-red flashing light” Friday as they watched the Stanley Cup playoffs on their off-night.
Although they didn’t need any reminders, the Sharks got to see just how dramatically things can change in a series when the Philadelphia Flyers responded to a 7-0 drubbing at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins Wednesday with a 5-1 win in Game 2.
The Sharks are preparing for Saturday’s game with the Penguins-Flyers series in mind.
“The big red flashing light is you don’t have to look any further than Pittsburgh-Philly,” DeBoer said. “This is a league where you can’t feel good about yourself for too long. We played a good game. We stuck to our game plan. We got rewarded for it in Game 1. We’ve got to put that aside.
“I know they’re going to be a whole lot better.”
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Defenseman Dylan DeMelo’s mind also wandered to the Sharks series with the Ducks as he watched the Flyers even up their series with the Penguins Friday. It showed that even the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions are susceptible to momentum swings in the playoffs.
“I don’t know whether Pittsburgh took their foot off the gas, but that’s something that can creep in when you beat a team in the first game like they did,” he said. “You might think it’s going to be easy going forward when it’s actually going to get a lot tougher. That applies to us tonight, obviously. We played well, but we’re going to need to play even better because they’re going to come out with a lot more determination.”