Grypho i sort of disagree with your theory. Sure "rust" can be an issue...but the "rest" actually helped the Wings get healthy, so there was a big benefit to having 9 days off. We should benefit from the fact that two of our top three forwards had 9 days to heal from their injuries (Franzen and Zetterberg). I thought both those guys looked a bit off...maybe they are still a bit banged up...who knows.
I think a 2-1 OT game is a close game. I think the Wings got the lead and then went into "passive, careful mode" in the 2nd. Wings forecheck went into the tank and the Sharks became the aggressors and had a lot of shots, but not necessarily all of those chances were great chances. In the third, the Wings looked like they were going to take this game with the "passive, careful" strategy. But that plan was disrupted with the penalties (while they were soft calls, i think Bert should have known better than to give the refs a chance to call a penalty in that situation...not a smart play).
In OT, either team could have won. But after killing off the 4 min penalty, there was a moment of discombobulation in our zone and the puck ends up in the net...fluke goal.
My opinion is that the Wings sometimes go into "passive" mode when they are ahead...they seem to relax...or become less aggressive. It bugs the hell out of me, but it has happened before. They also need to SHOOT THE DAMN PUCK. Sorry there. But it pisses me off to no end when they over-dangle and hang onto the puck and search for that perfect tick tack toe goal when they can just shoot it ON NET, get a frickin rebound and score a frickin goal. There was a lot of that going on in game 1...as well as the passive mode thing. I doubt it has much to do with the rest or being over-rested. Babcock needs to tell them to forecheck more aggressively and shoot it on net more to test Niemmi a bit.