Washington hasn’t had luck against Sharks on road The arena is known as “The Shark Tank,” an ominous nickname that conveys how the Capitals have fared in San Jose over the years.
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Nestled downtown, HP Pavilion — originally known as San Jose Arena — isn’t much to look at save for the pitched glass facade that resembles a shark’s fin. But it becomes a raving madhouse inside, where the Sharks are 168-63-36 since the NHL resumed play in 2005 after its lockout. Only the Detroit Red Wings have a better home record over the past 6 years. Washington (21-15-2, 44 points) will try to solve that puzzle when it travels to San Jose on Saturday night, the start of a brief two-game road trip in California.
“It’s a tough building to play in,” said Caps forward Troy Brouwer, who helped the Chicago Blackhawks win the first two games of a Stanley Cup playoff series there in 2010. “It’s very intimidating, and you’ve got to come in [with] a good start because they’ve got a very skilled, very fast team. You’ve just got to make them work.”
Brouwer may have won there with Chicago. But the last time Washington earned a regulation victory in San Jose, Bill Clinton had just been inaugurated for the first time and Nirvana was still the world’s biggest band. It was Oct. 30, 1993, a 4-2 win that improved the Caps to 3-0 on the road against the expansion Sharks, who were founded in 1991.
It was also just the seventh game ever played at HP Pavilion, which opened the month before. But since that date Washington is 0-10-1 there — the lone point earned in a 3-3 tie on Dec. 10, 1997 — and has been outscored 21-7 in its last five games in San Jose.
“They got good fans like we have here. They’re loud, and it does give you the edge,” Caps coach Dale Hunter said. “But we’re just going to have to have a good start. I think by talking to guys, in the past they jumped on us early. So we got to get off to a good start in the first [period] and go from there.”
