SAN JOSE, Ca – It wasn’t until there were less than three minutes left in regulation time that the sellout crowd at the HP Pavilion had something to cheer about and the roof nearly left the atmosphere when team captain Joe Thornton tipped in a Jason Demers point shot to tie the game and eventually force overtime in the 2-1 Sharks victory.
“Jason made a great play, he shot for my stick and it was a tip but he had great eyes to get his head up, I just had to lay my stick on it.” is how Joe Thornton described the first and only goal scored by the Sharks in sixty-five minutes of play.
Overtime solved nothing and it came down to the shootout.
Ryan Clowe was the first shooter and the only man to score on either goalie. Clowe has netted his fair share of goals on breakaways and shootouts by faking the shot and going high to the backhand. Last night he did just that, but not to be predictable he added one more juke at the end bringing the puck back to his forehand side to open things up enough to bury the puck above the pad and below the blocker of goaltender Brian Elliott.
“I was thinking of probably going backhand and then I looked up and he might have been leaning a little bit to the glove side so I tried to go low blocker,” Clowe said “It’s always a tough save for goalie.”
Logan Couture and Joe Pavelski were unable to beat Elliott for the Sharks but only one goal was needed to earn two points against the struggling Avalanche.
On the day that Antti Niemi signed a four year contract extension, averaging 3.8 million per year, he demonstrated his shootout skills stopping Milan Hejduk, Matt Duchene and David Jones. Hejduk was stoned by Niemi’s glove hand and Jones shot missed the net high on the glove side. Duchene was the only person to beat the Sharks goalie but hit iron on his deke move to his backhand side.
“Giving up one goal and getting two points is great.” said Niemi.
While enjoying the man advantage the Sharks had good puck movement but the scoring chances were just not there. Clearly this team is missing their power play quarterback, Dan Boyle. When all said and done the Sharks went 0-4 on the power play and the penalty kill finished the night 1-2.
Coach Todd McLellan commented on the power play after the game, “Some of it has to do with how they are killing but a lot of It was us, we killed our own power plays with passing and not retrieving pucks. We have to be better.”
Both periods ended with the Sharks applying good pressure and creating scoring chances but they were unable to keep that momentum going into the 2nd or the 3rd.
“We talked about that in between periods and we wanted to have a good start.” said coach McLellan “Between the first and second we anted to re-establish our game and we didn’t quite do that, we were chasing it and obviously with this team we are going to face on Thursday (referring to the Detroit Red Wings) we will have to be better.”
The Sharks team that we saw earlier in the season may have imploded after two periods of strong play with no results and gotten away from the game plan, however the team that has vaulted themselves into the Pacific division lead stuck with it and gutted out a tough win.
Next in town to face the Sharks are the Detroit Red Wings. Their last visit to the Bay area was November 30th and they came away with a 5-3 win. Since then the Sharks have beaten the Wings twice in Joe Louis arena by the scores of 5-2 and 4-3.
Tonight’s match up will be the fourth and final meeting of the regular season between these organizations and promises to be a game worth watching.
Keep your sticks on the ice,
Contact Cam.Gore@prohockeynews.com
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