In San Jose, Philipp Grubauer made 26 saves for the Colorado Avalanche in a 4-0 win over the Sharks on Wednesday night.
“It’s about the team and helping the team win,” Grubauer said. “I think that was really the main thing for us. It was really good. I feel great.”
Mikko Rantanen bookended the Avs offense with two goals on the night.
“Great response,” Rantanen said. “We had a meeting (Wednesday morning) and everybody understood the situation and everybody played well. I felt really good, my legs felt good. Obviously, the guys around me helped me a lot.”
The Sharks dropped to 8-10-2 with the loss.
“Just couldn’t get anything going,” San Jose head coach Bob Boughner said. “The second goal really took the wind out of our sails. When you don’t make that team defend, they have a lot of juice on offense.”
Samuel Girard and Gabriel Landeskog scored in a three-goal third period to extend the Avs lead to 3-0.
“We played a good game and we deserved to win tonight,” Landeskog said. “We weren’t happy with the way we played game one here in San Jose, and we wanted to come back and really make sure we responded and played our best game. Tonight, I definitely think we showed some of our best.”
The Avs improved to 12-7-1.
“Throughout our lineup guys were playing hard, trying to outwork the guys across from them,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “I think that our focus was real good, the determination was there. We were skating and winning the races. The competitiveness that the league requires in order for you to win two out of three games, three out of four games, that’s the play that we had from our guys, from [Grubauer], all the way through our lineup.”
Nathan MacKinnon left the game midway through the third period after taking a shoulder to the head while coming off the ice on a shift change.
“I saw him coming off the ice, he was in the hallway and he seems to be doing good,” Bednar said. “I think we got lucky on it. Hopefully he’s feeling good and everything tomorrow, but as of right now he seems to be fine.”
Martin Jones made 34 saves in the loss.
“We want to get over that .500 mark,” San Jose’s Mario Ferraro said. “We have to stack up some wins, but we don’t want to get frustrated with each other. With these [two-game sets] it’s tougher to win.”
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