Friday night, as usual, the giant shark head dropped from the SAP Center rafters before the opening faceoff. But as the fiberglass head descended, the large red eyes blinked at a very odd sight:
Empty seats. Many empty seats. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.The first nonsellout playoff crowd in Shark franchise history.Granted, that's not the same thing as, say, New York Rangers franchise history. But the Sharks' home sellout streak did last 90 games and dated to 1994. It's a streak no team would like to break.For the record, Friday's announced attendance at Game 1 of the Sharks-Predators series was 17,026, which put it 536 short of SAP Center's capacity.