Associated Press ST. LOUIS -- San Jose's Steve Shields allowed the St. Louis Blues to get back into their first-round NHL playoff series by allowing six goals in Game 6. Blame it, he said, on a T-shirt. "You know what happened," Shields said after the Sharks' 3-1 Game 7 win Tuesday night. "I've got a buddy in San Francisco and I forgot to pick him up a T-shirt at the Bowling Hall of Fame last week. "I had to make sure we could come back and pick it up. Now we're all set to go home." That's why he let the Blues, a team that's come back twice in the NHL playoffs from a 3-1 series deficit, score five goals in Game 6's second period? For a bowling T-shirt? "I'm serious," he insisted. His play in Game 7 almost makes you believe it. Shields didn't face a shot until almost six minutes into the first period, after the Sharks had already put six on his St. Louis counterpart, Roman Turek. And when St. Louis did finally start putting the puck on net, Shields erased the memory of his play in Game 6 with a 19-save performance. "Game 6, those things happen," Shields said. "If you can't live with those, you may be playing the wrong position." To recover, Shields said he made an effort Tuesday to skate less than he did in Game 6. Instead of worrying about moving in and out of the net to maintain position, he said he focused simply on watching the puck. "It's unbelievable how everything works when you simplify and play your game," he said. Still, that didn't keep the Sharks' second-year goaltender from fretting before Tuesday's game. It'd be easy to turn the switch off, he said, if only he could figure out how. "There is so much crap in your mind that you've got to deal with," Shields said. "You don't want to know. Negative, positive, the consequence of what happens if you let in a bad one. Just all sorts of stuff that's detrimental to your play." In there somewhere is probably a vision of what happened to Turek with 10.2 seconds left in the first period. From about five feet outside the blue line, Owen Nolan let loose a shot that skipped off Turek's glove and into the net, putting San Jose up 2-0. "I feel bad for the guy because he's a great goalie, to be able to play at the level he did all season," he said. "Those are the hardest kind of shots to stop because you've got time to think about what's happened." |
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