Not for some time has the spotlight has shone on the NHL’s Western Conference. It’s been so long, in fact, that the Chicago Blackhawks were caught spending a day off Friday at Alcatraz, the famous island prison site about an hour north of San Jose.

That led to a light-hearted round of questions from reporters Friday about who should be left behind.

“I’d leave (Adam) Burish,” Chicago forward Patrick Sharp said. “He wouldn’t last very long. They’d probably put him in solitary confinement.”

Jokes are a welcome luxury from the playoff grind in the West, were the top-seeded San Jose Sharks and second-seeded Blackhawks simply haven’t been playing a lot lately.

It’s been eight days since the Sharks’ last game, a 2-1 home win over the Detroit Red Wings on May 8. The Blackhawks will have five days between games after they ousted the Vancouver Canucks on May 11. Contrast that to the Eastern Conference, where the Philadelphia Flyers will play two days after their Game 7 win in Boston; their opponent, the Montreal Canadiens, have only four days’ rest.

When the puck finally drops on Game 1 at noon (Pacific) Sunday, it will be the first-ever playoff meeting between the Sharks and the Blackhawks. While Chicago’s arrival in the Conference Finals seems right on schedule, Sharks fans can only wonder what took their team so long.

San Jose’s core personnel looks mostly the same as it did a year ago, when it lost to eighth-seeded Anaheim in the first playoff round. Since then, however, Rob Blake has replaced Patrick Marleau as captain, Dany Heatley has replaced Milan Michalek as the No. 1 right wing, and the role players got a tad younger (au revoir, Claude Lemieux, bonjour, Logan Couture!).

More importantly than any of those changes, a second line has emerged to take the tremendous pressure off Marleau, Heatley and Joe Thornton. Center Joe Pavelski’s nine playoffs goals lead the team and rank second in the league, left wing Devin Setoguchi is next on the Sharks with five, and right wing Ryane Clowe (two goals, eight assists in 11 games) has benefited from their productivity.

Since losing two of three to the Colorado Avalanche in its first-round series, San Jose has lost only once.

Chicago needed six games to beat Nashville and Vancouver, respectively, in rounds one and two – not unlike last year, when it beat Calgary and Vancouver in a pair of six-game series. But the expectations are higher this year for the ‘Hawks to advance to their first Stanley Cup Finals since 1992.

Captain Jonathan Toews is a year older and is leading by example, with a playoff-best 20 points (six goals, 14 assists). While Marian Hossa and Patrick Kane have provided ample scoring support, plenty of attention has followed the versatile Dustin Byfuglien.

Though he has occasionally shifted in on defense, Byfuglien has made more noise as a forward, serving as a Tomas Holmstrom-type lunar eclipse to Roberto Luongo’s (and Pekka Rinne’s) sun. Like Holmstrom in Detroit, Byfuglien’s statistics — four goals, two assists in 12 games — don’t tell the full story of his impact.

Antti Niemi has been stellar as well, quickly answering a question between the pipes that many perceived prior to the playoffs.

The Sharks will need their youthful feet against the Blackhawks, perhaps the league’s fastest team. Chicago, meanwhile, will need its top forecheckers like Burish and John Madden to help contain the Sharks’ potent scorers.

In other words, they aren’t the first guys you’d want to leave on the island.

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