“Obviously, there’s a lot more on the line, but just worry about your game and getting your game going I think is the biggest thing”. “We’ll make those decisions as the series gets dictated based on what we feel we need”. Thornton and Marleau, both 36, were taken with the top two picks in the 1997 draft that was held in Pittsburgh while 37-year-old Dainius Zubrus draws stares from younger teammates when he tells them he used to play against Hall of Famer (and current Penguins owner) Mario Lemieux.
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The Penguins, like the Sharks, are a study in near instant alchemy. So, who wins the Cup – the rolling Penguins squad (sans Trevor Daley, ex-Star extraordinaire) or the Sharks, who most Stars fans dislike on principal due to all those playoff series days of yore? Sheary shot through a screen set by linemate Patric Hornqvist.
Penguins right wing Bryan Rust took a high hit from San Jose’s Patrick Marleau early in the third period and adjourned to the dressing room. After San Jose’s Justin Braun missed on a pinch, Justin Schultz’s shot banked off Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Rust was crashing the net at the ideal time to beat goalie Martin Jones. Marc-Andre Fleury has allowed four goals on 32 shots faced and Matt Murray has given up 35 goals on 463 shots.
Fellow rookie Conor Sheary joined Rust on the scoresheet moments later after taking a pass from Crosby.
Less than a minute later, Sheary, who didn’t become a regular until the middle of January, made it 2-0 when Sidney Crosby whipped a blind backhand cross-ice pass to Sheary’s stick.
“Credit to them, they came out and were moving, like you would expect if you were playing at home in the first game of the Stanley Cup Final”, said Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer. Shots on Goal-San Jose 4-13-9-26. The Sharks pulled Jones and had a 6-on-4 advantage for the final 1:15 of the power play.
“It’s the Stanley Cup Finals”, Burns said.
The Sharks continued their push before evening the score at 2-2 with less than two minutes to go in the second. We started playing the way we were capable of playing. Eventually, after Logan Couture won a battle for the puck in the corner, Burns got it back on his tape and fired from the point.
Late in the second, Marleau collected a rebound off a Burns one-timer behind the Pittsburgh net and then beat Murray on a wraparound that caromed off Murray’s extended right leg and into the net.
The goal capped the Sharks comeback from a deep early hole.
They were banged up, beat up and, perhaps, fed up on Sunday, so much so that they could not show up for Media Day at the 2016 National Hockey League final.
The Sharks had a chance to tie it when Penguins defenseman Ben Lovejoy was whistled for hooking with 2:09 to play, but their top-ranked power play was unable to produce sustained pressure even with Jones on the bench for the extra attacker. Jones came up big again a little while after that, first turning down Hornqvist rushing in on a feed from Crosby. Penalties-Cole, Pit (hooking), 1:14; Pavelski, SJ (tripping), 18:52; Thornton, SJ (roughing), 18:52; Malkin, Pit (slashing), 18:52. Marleau was given a two-minute minor penalty for an illegal check to the head, and he could be looked at for more discipline.
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The Sharks converted on the one power play chance they had through the first two periods of Monday’s Game 1.
