"You just have to do everything better than they do," San Jose center Joe Thornton said. "You have to win the faceoff battle, the hit battle, the takeaway battle, the special-teams battle, the 5-on-5 [battle]. If you do all those things I like your chances."
2. NO ORDINARY JOES
While San Jose can talk about depth all it wants, its top line has carried the weight through the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
But the line of Thornton, Joe Pavelski and Tomas Hertl was not at its best in the 4-3 overtime loss Monday in Game 6. The goals for San Jose came from fourth-line forward Chris Tierney, who scored twice, and second-line center Logan Couture. Not only did the first line not score, but each player had one shot on goal.
In Game 7, the Sharks will have the last change and for the most part can dictate who the Thornton line plays against.
"We can skate a little better for sure," Pavelski said. "We can support the puck. I think the biggest thing is just execution. There's a couple times we had some breaks where, not only breaking out but we had 3-on-2 rushes where guys were kind of falling over, losing the puck, however it happened. That's just the way the night went. We weren't good enough by any means. Execute a little better and just worry about yourselves and worry about compete."
3. PANIC ATTACK
If things don't go right at the start, neither team can panic. This series has been too close and there have been too many comebacks to allow a bad shift, or even a string of bad shifts, to doom the game plan installed during the past two days.