Sharks blank Blues to draw even in West finals
The San Jose Sharks were the best road team in the NHL during the 2015-16 season and they played what had to be one of their best road games of the season Tuesday night to tie the Western Conference finals at one game apiece thanks to an impressive 4-0 win over the St. Louis Blues.
This was pretty one-sided from the opening face off.
Tommy Wingels started it off for the Sharks just 2:07 into the first period with his second goal of the playoffs. Anytime you can get a goal from your fourth line, especially that early in a big playoff game, it would seem to be the start of a good night. It ended up being the only goal the Sharks would need.
Let’s take a look at everything that happened with five takeaways from the Sharks’ Game 2 win.
1. The Sharks’ power play is amazing. During 5-on-5 play this series has been played at a noticeably slower pace than the Eastern Conference finals series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning.
That changes when the Sharks get on the power play when everything gets kicked into an entirely new gear with their top power play unit on the ice. Simply put, these guys are amazing.
They scored two more goals on Tuesday night and both came from Brent Burns who had a big bounce-back game after what was probably his worst game of the postseason in Game 1.
His first goal, which gave the Sharks a 2-0 lead, finished some quick puck movement by the Sharks, including a perfect pass by Joe Pavelski.
So quick. So dangerous. So unstoppable.
Burns helped put the game away in the third period with his second goal of the game and already his sixth of the playoffs.
Burns is now up to 18 points in the playoffs, and, including the regular season, he has 33 goals and 93 points in 96 games. As a defenseman.
Burns would have taken over the NHL’s playoffs points lead on those goals except his teammate, Logan Couture, assisted on both of them and maintained his one-point lead.
2. The Blues have to stay out of the penalty box. The Blues were not particularly good on Tuesday night, but the biggest issue they had was their inability to stay out of the penalty box. You just can not give that Sharks power-play unit an opportunity to strike, and the Blues did that far too often in Game 2. What makes it even worse is that many were terrible penalties, including the slashing penalty that led to Burns’ first goal and the Steve Ott interference penalty that immediately followed it.
3. Joe Thornton had some fun. Thornton did not factor into the scoring Tuesday night but he seemed to be really enjoying himself with a little dance party with some young Blues fans on the bench during a stoppage in play.
4. Martin Jones with a big bounce-back game for the Sharks. Jones wasn’t necessarily bad in the Sharks’ Game 1 loss, but he did give up a pretty bad goal to Patrik Berglund that turned out to be the difference.
He made up for it Tuesday with a perfect showing in Game 2 where he stopped 26 shots to record his second shutout of the playoffs.
He earned that shutout, too. He did get some good luck when Troy Brouwer rang two different shots off the post, but that is going to happen from time to time. Other than that, he was pretty much flawless in the crease.
The Blues had their share of chances in this game because the Sharks had their own issues when it came to staying out of the penalty box, taking five penalties, including a four-minute high-sticking penalty by Patrick Marleau in the third period when it was still a two-goal game.
The Blues had 12 shots on those power plays and Jones stopped them all.
The Sharks were the better team at 5-on-5 and pretty much dominated the special teams games.
That is a pretty good recipe for success every night.
5. The Blues had some injury scares. It was a rough night early on for the Blues when Alexander Steen and Patrick Berglund both had to briefly leave the game.
First it was Steen after he was on the receiving end of a leg-on-leg collision with San Jose’s Dainius Zubrus.
Steen returned for the start of the second period and played the remainder of the game.
After that, Berglund was shaken up when he went for a check along the boards just as the door to the bench was opening up. He ended up smacking his leg off of the opening.
Like Steen, Berglund also returned but those are two players that could have very easily had significantly worse results.
Thankfully for the Blues, they did not. Steen and Berglund each have four goals this postseason.
