Unlike recent postseason failures, there really wasn’t a sense of great despair or utter frustration in the Sharks’ locker room at SAP Center on Saturday night.
Maybe, just maybe, this San Jose team had come to terms with two things: It had put up as good a fight as it could against a talented, on-the-rise Edmonton Oilers team; and from the middle of March to the very end, the handwriting was on the wall.
The defending Western Conference champs, beat up and goal-starved, were done in six games of the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.