Video: Joe Thornton attempts to inspire teammates, fails

Taking a lesson from the Maxime Talbot school of firing up your teammates, San Jose Sharks center Joe Thornton attempted to help his team force a seventh game last night in Anaheim and dispel critics who have dogged "Jumbo Joe" for his annual early summer vacations.

Immediately after the opening faceoff, Thornton went at it with the Anaheim Ducks' Ryan Getzlaf. While 82 percent of readers at HockeyFights.com gave the bout to Thornton, much like in the Talbot-Daniel Carcillo fight from Saturday the winner didn't end up getting the spoils:

"The two most dominant centers in the NHL?" Remember this one next time someone claims there's no such thing as West Coast bias. What exactly does Thornton dominate? The month of October?

This was the third straight year that San Jose finished with 100-plus points and had a season that "had so much promise" before it epically flamed out. So where do the Sharks go from here? Does the team need to be broken up and have new life injected into it? Does that mean trading Patrick Marleau or Joe Thornton?

If you were hoping to tune in on Versus to catch the start of the Ducks-Sharks Game Six, you were probably surprised to see Calgary Flames-Chicago Blackhawks in its place. And when you went to the Yahoo! box score page, you saw that Thornton and Getzlaf dropped the gloves two seconds in and were pretty pissed. That's what happens when you get two games starting within an hour of each other, and only one network (if you don't have Center Ice) to broadcast them.

We received a slew of emails this morning from irate fans that had hoped to see the Battle of California, and instead were subjected to the Blackhawks' domination over the Flames in Game 6 of their series. For whatever reason, Versus decided not to switch over until there was about two minutes left in the second period, according to one viewer.

Speaking of conflicting schedules, with two Game 7s tonight within a half hour of each other, some Canadian fans will be screwed by the fact that the New Jersey Devils-Carolina Hurricanes game will be TSN2. You've got less than 12 hours to find an Internet stream that doesn't buffer every three seconds ...