from Mark Purdy of the Mercury News,

Saturday’s defeat eliminated the beloved Los Tiburones from the Stanley Cup tournament three rounds before they went home a year ago when they reached the Final and lost in six games to the Pittsburgh Penguins. But that result was more understandable, if just as non-palatable. The Penguins were a team full of veteran stars who had experienced a previous championship parade. Saturday, the Sharks were finished off by an Oilers’ squad of young whippersnappers, many of whom had never been involved in any postseason games.

It is entirely possible, though, that all of those playoff games last spring and summer, added to some World Cup of Hockey games by several top Sharks, on top of the regular season grind . . . well, all of it could have piled up and helped create what we saw over the six playoff nights.

Pete DeBoer, the Sharks’ coach, said in his postgame media remarks that he did not want to dive too deep into certain elements of what happened because he wanted to give Edmonton proper credit. But then DeBoer finished that remark with the bottom line.

“My gut feeling is, we ran out of some gas here in the last month,” DeBoer said.

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