The San Jose Sharks have come out of the gates on the new NHL season with a mission.
On Friday night, the Sharks handed the Maple Leafs a 5-3 loss, in Toronto.
“Just the way we won it, being a back-to-back situation coming into a building where we knew they were rested and hungry and looking to break out offensively, it was just a huge two points and keeps us rolling,” San Jose head coach Bob Boughner said. “More than anything, it was complete team effort for us.”
Logan Couture scored the first and last goals of the game for the Sharks.
“It’s huge to start like this,” Couture said. “That was the main focus in training camp, to get off to a good start this year. Last two years, we haven’t and it’s snowballed into tough seasons. We had a really good camp, a really good preseason and we’ve carried it into the regular season.”
San Jose is now 4-0-0.
“The way they play, they really keep everybody on the outside and try to control the middle of the ice,” Toronto’s Auston Matthews said. “I don’t think we did a good enough job to generate chances, Grade-A scoring chances on the inside. I think we could all be better. We didn’t take advantage of having a very good start. Our start wasn’t ideal for us, especially playing a team coming off back to backs.”
Adin Hill made 30 saves to get the road win.
San Jose controlled much of the evening’s festivities and surrendered goals to Jason Spezza, Ondrej Kase and John Tavares.
“We thought we should have had a better start in terms of being able to dictate the pace and score first,” Toronto head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “I thought we had the puck a ton, probably twice as much as the opposition tonight, but they made it challenging to get to the front of the net, they were protecting the inside a lot. We didn’t adjust quickly enough, we didn’t make it hard enough on the goaltending, our power play couldn’t be the difference we needed, especially early in the game, and as a result we were chasing all the way though.”
Timo Meier and Erik Karlsson also scored for the Sharks.
“No, I didn’t see a hole, I just tried to get it on net, I saw there was traffic,” Meier said. “Dahlen did a nice job getting in front of his eyes to get some confusion there.
After a scoreless first period, the Sharks took a 3-2 lead in the third period; Jonathan Dahlen scored with just 25 seconds gone in the final frame to put an exclamation point on the Sharks’ efforts for a 4-2 lead.
“The third-period goal, that’s inexcusable, you cannot start the period like that when you’re trying to come back,” Keefe said.
Michael Hutchinson made 26 saves in the loss.
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