Two trades with the Toronto Maple Leafs in one week and if you aggregate them it looks like both teams won out. Also, we can no longer change the name of our podcast to Brown Notes because it seems like our long national nightmare is over — he’s a Barracuda now. Regardless, the Sharks aren’t markedly better today, but they’ve plugged the holes that would prevent them from winning a round of the playoffs. Whether they can get further? That’s goalie voodoo, man.

Alex and Ben jumped on the internets to discuss what the Sharks gave up to acquire some DeBoer-friendly veteran player depth. And at the cost of the corpse of Raffi Torres and two future 2nd round draft picks. The main question is: where do the Sharks go to get a legit backup goalie?

Mike Brown should never skate another minute with the Sharks. Goalies should never play both halves of a back to back. Unfortunately, injuries and poor play pushed DeBoer and the organization to make some bad calls. That said, the only cost to these decisions was to lose the second half of a road back-to-back. In other words, a game the Sharks were going to probably lose anyway. Colin and I talk about the reasons and impact of the bad decisions, as we  do. Alex was changing diapers and weeping, as predicted. This means that I (Ben) had to host and edit the podcast again. That’s never a good thing.

This week we talk about Dylan DeMelo’s growth on the Sharks 3rd D-pair, the effect of Brendan Dillon’s mysterious upper-body concussion er injury on the Sharks’ not-so-deep-already D corps (and the upcoming trade deadline) and the solidification of the bottom six with the healthy returns of Logan Couture and, of all people, 95-year old Dainius Zubrus. Also, because Alex had to go like be a dad or something, Ben takes his first shot at assembling the podcast. Next time he has to edit, Ben promises to play with compression to even out volume changes.

We missed last Sunday and the Sharks didn’t exactly have a great week, so we turn the podcast to some other stuff to ramp things up: the All-Star Game (it was good!), empathy for the goons of the world, Brent Burns as a potential ‘face of the NHL’, the strange “puppies for goals” promotion the NHL was apparently running ahead of the break and finally, a little bit on the approaching trade deadline. Finally, some talk about how the Sharks have been dealing with losing games they shouldn’t of late and the worrisome stuff of post-game press conferences. Go Sharks!