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…San Jose.

Five home ice losses all year in the regular season.

Now two home ice losses to start the playoffs.

The top seed in the Western Conference is down two games heading to Anaheim for the middle part of their series. Less than ideal. Ray Ratto in the SF Chronicle on the carnage:

“The Sharks affirmed the general value of the Presidents’ Trophy as a spittoon with handles Sunday night by taking yet another face-plant toward irrelevance, losing 3-2 to Anaheim and reinforcing the nationally held notion that their greatest trait is squeezing the fiberglass coating off their sticks.

Sunday’s failing came in a game in which they were much the better side in all but that goal-scoring thing. They crowded Anaheim goalie Jonas Hiller. They spent more than half the game in the Ducks’ zone. They took 44 shots. They induced the Ducks to commit more silly penalties. But because of their proud tradition of not scoring in the playoffs, none of the rest of it really matters.

My first real hockey post of the season, so of course it starts off with the Oilers.

Two of the top teams this year, Washington and San Jose, have compiled amazing home records thus far.  Washington is 18-3-1 at the Phone Booth and the Sharks are 20-0-2 at the HP Pavilion.

Combined, the two are 38-3-3 on home ice.

On two different occasions this hockey year, the lowly Edmonton Oilers, currently in 10th place in the West, have walked into these rinks and put a dent in the two superpowers’ home ice record.

The first, was back on December 6th when, in front of a Hockey Night in Canada television crowd, the Oilers survived a 17-43 shot barrage and ended a Sharks 9 game winning streak in overtime.

Then last night in Washington, the Oilers were again outshot ( 23-36 this time ) and were without their best offensive player, Ales Hemsky. But Edmonton strolled to a 5-2 victory in one of the hardest places to win in the East.

Of that 38-3-3 record, 33% of the losses have been at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers.

But this isn’t just misplaced homerism. There’s something deeper here.

Pro hockey has always been a sport where the difference separating the bottom playoff teams from the top non-playoff teams was tight. But this year it’s a little bit out of control.

Yes, the bottom of the standings are as tight as ever: the second to last place LA Kings are just 6 points out of a playoff spot in the West. But we’re also seeing an unusal lack of separation at the top of the standings too. Right now, there’s Boston, San Jose, and Detroit… and then everyone else.

A winning streak, like the 9 game streak Chicago went on in December could vault a team from the bottom of the standings to the top.

The All Star break beings a week from Thursday. And after that, it’s full speed ahead towards the playoffs. It’s going to be some finish.