At the same time, the Sharks were taking out their revenge on the Kings where it mattered the most – on the scoreboard.
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The Sharks head to St. Louis for the NHL Western Conference finals with the knowledge that they’ve already won twice convincingly in the Blues’ arena, the Scottrade Center.
However, even when you’re having a great performance, sometimes you need a few bounces to go your way.
“Every step to the Stanley Cup is a little tougher”, Sharks coach Pete DeBoer said Saturday before his team left for St. Louis. “We just want to make it hard for them to get in that position”.
The Sharks and Blues open up the Western Conference Final with Game 1. Then 34 seconds Tomas Hertl tied it up with assists from Joe Pavelski and Brent Burns. San Jose defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic knocked the puck into the net, and initially it was ruled a goal on the ice. When that didn’t pan out and they let him walk as a free agent, the Blues started Jake Allen in the playoffs a year ago, even though Elliott started more games and had a better save percentage and goals-against average in the regular season. I have it and I feel it…
Looking at special teams rates is just a piece of the puzzle – but they’re the edge pieces.
They have a unsafe power play, so the key for is going to be not giving them the ability to play the power play, Sharks forward Tommy Wingels said. Of the six active National Hockey League teams never to make the Stanley Cup round, they are by far the most successful – six division championships and 17 playoff appearances in 23 prior seasons, yet only three conference finals and zero trips to the championship round.
The Blues lead the best-of-7 series 1-0. Just shy of the midway point of the contest, a puck that wasn’t quite settled when the Blues’ Jori Lehtera slapped at it from a reasonably safe distance found some space under Jones’ arm as he tried to squeeze it shut. But the playoffs continue onward, and the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues find themselves vying for their shot at a first Stanley Cup in franchise history. The club may also get both Stamkos and Stralman back at some point, the Swedish defenceman the likelier of the two.
“Playoffs are different”, he said. You look at film (from those games), absolutely. They’re like this season’s Los Angeles Kings, but with more forward depth. Sure, the duo had nice seasons and all, you knew the characters on each side, but once the regular season ended, you could be forgiven in ignoring these two.
DeBoer had a handful of things he needed to work on when he first got the job, but correcting the power play wasn’t of them, as he credited the work Todd McLellan did for helping set the bar, and current assistant Steve Spott for not letting it slip.
In the first round, the Blues outplayed, outhit, outscored and outclassed the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks, a team that had won three of the previous six Stanley Cups. That said, the Blues managed to have a great penalty kill and limited the Sharks’ chances despite San Jose’s absolutely deadly top power-play unit. “You’re just hoping maybe we’ll get a chance to put it in the empty net”.
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“I’m going to blame that one on the stick”, said Pavelski, who was denied on all seven of his game-high seven shots. He and other members of the Sharks’ nucleus that remains from that year certainly didn’t think it would take another five seasons to get back. They were 4-0 at home in the second round against the Predators, and 0-3 in Nashville.
