Despite Stanley Cup Final berth, hungry Sharks left unsatisfied

The San Jose Sharks at this moment are a lot less impressed with the San Jose Sharks than you are. They have to be. You wouldn’t want it any other way.

They actually are not satisfied with merely playing for the Stanley Cup, and though this is considered a major moment in the history of hockey civilization to everyone else who pays attention to things like team droughts and bittersweet historical narratives, their job is only 75 percent done.

But 75 percent is more than they’ve ever done before, and it is perfectly fitting that the goal scorers in Wednesday night’s epochal 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues in Game 6 of the Western Conference Final were two men who have lived the bitter history (Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture) and two who has been blissfully absent from it (Joel Ward and Joonas Donskoi).

“I’ve been through this before,” coach Peter DeBoer said, channeling his own trip to the Finals with New Jersey in 2012. “I told them, ‘If you don’t win the next round, it’s still not a great summer.’”

[KURZ: Instant Replay: Sharks eliminate Blues, reach first Cup Final]

And that’s the cold, hard and heartening truth. You get to be giddy and giggly and drunk like sailors on leave, but they’re still on the job, because the job is not yet done.

Oh, don’t think that the fan experience doesn’t matter here. The crowd was in full-throated roar mode from the moment that Ward’s second goal of the game, 3:30 into the third period, beat Blues goalie Brian Elliott. They’ve eaten all the history, and they are beyond ecstatic at finally washing that taste from their mouths.

But the players -– they fronted this achievement off, because they have to front it off. They surrounded and looked at the Clarence Campbell Bowl, emblematic of Western Conference supremacy, with the disdain of their predecessors because, by lore and law, the only cup worth having is Stanley’s. They gathered around it, looked at it like a glorified beer can, and moved on to their next great task -– because that’s the only way this works for everyone.

It is by ignoring the history that enraptures this organization and town that the players responsible could conceivably finish the job that so many people thought could never be undertaken.

In other words, if the rear-view mirror has held no fascination for them so far, what possible good would it do to have them start looking into it now?

Their performance Wednesday was sufficiently comprehensive that the long-angsty customers didn’t have to spend too much time sweating the result, allowing them to bask in their first-ever glimpse of the championship round.

The Sharks did it they way they typically have in these playoffs -– by controlling the first period, enduring the second and insuring the third. They never broke ranks, got goofy, or fell for any of St. Louis’ attempts to bait them. They maintained their positional integrity with the steely disciplined that has dominated their postseason run -– winning the majority of races, persistently squeezing St. Louis’ entries into the offensive zone, and protecting goalie Martin Jones from excessive pressure or harm.

They produced what used to be an all-too-familiar and malicious curse, and is now a glowing compliment -– textbook Sharks hockey.

Pavelski’s goal came through the habit of following a Joe Thornton shot and spotting a gap beneath Elliott’s left ankle. Ward deflected a Brent Burns drive (of course he did). The second Ward goal was a product of persistence, the Donskoi goal of the gift of speed caused by the Blues having to abandon all caution, and Couture’s was an empty-netter with 19.7 second left before a deafening roar. If head coach Peter DeBoer had plotted it in bed Tuesday night, with his arms folded across his chest as he does behind the bench, it would have looked just this way.

But for those fans, to whom the Stanley Cup had long been something that happens to other people, this is BirCrisFour – their birthdays, stuffed inside Christmas crammed into the Fourth of July.

The players, for their part, sloughed off the accomplishment as much as they could, because they will only be all the more disappointed if, having come this far, they don’t finish the job.

You see, this is the classic job-vs.-legacy argument. It isn’t enough for Joe Thornton to no longer be one of the best players never to have played for the Cup. Nor for Patrick Marleau or Joe Pavelski. They must be in it to win it, because no hockey playing lad has ever said, “When I grow up, I want to watch someone else’s name engraved on the Stanley Cup.”

It is, however, sufficient for the customers, and the front office, and the city of San Jose, which has bathed in close calls, not-so-close calls and no calls at all. Getting there matters a great deal, and it should. After all, players and coaches come and go, but the team is always there, and its history with it.

And that’s the other thing to remember here. Their history is not eradicated by finally getting to a Cup final, because history is indelible. What Wednesday’s victory did was allow them to change the wording a bit, drop in a few punchy paragraphs about finally achieving their promise and making the adage about good things coming to those who struggle a real thing.

What it did, literature-wise, was change “never fulfilled” to “largely unfulfilled,” which leads to the current “nearly fulfilled.”

This team did endure a lot of spectacularly bitter disappointments, and those disappointments do not disappear. But they are put in a new context now, more prelude than punishment.

And tonight, in the town that has loved this team with greater fervor than the team has returned, their feelings are now fully requited.

Just so they understand that the players don’t share that emotion yet. Again, you don’t want them to. You want them as they are, already steeling for the Tampa Bay Lightning or Pittsburgh Penguins for the only moment that can dim this moment.

After all, tonight’s parties are one thing, but the promise of a parade trumps them all. Basking in perpetual glory, after all, beats merely killing demons every time.