Twenty-nine of the Sharks’ 46 wins this season came after Christmas.
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“I don’t know”, he said. With the top three scorers in this year’s playoffs (Logan Couture, Joe Pavelski, and Brent Burns) in their lineup, the Sharks pose a significant problem even without a depleted blue line corps, much less to a team playing without one of its top defenders. The task will be a little easier the first two games as the Penguins have the last change. Mike Sullivan replaced Mike Johnston in December, with Crosby and an extraordinarily talented group struggling to score.
Important to plant seeds of doubt in an opponent early in a series. Outside of any potential goaltending meltdowns this series will be decided by the San Jose Sharks defensemen and their ability to shutdown the Penguins forward depth.
And we saw the Tampa Bay Lightning use the long stretch pass, especially using Victor Hedman to execute it.
Besides missing Stamkos for most of the series, Tampa Bay also had to play without Vezina Trophy finalist goaltender Ben Bishop, who has been out with an undisclosed injury since the first period of Game One. Fleury would start game 5, but he would lose in overtime, and he looked shaky throughout. In the regular season the Sharks had the better power play, while Pittsburgh’s penalty kill was stronger than San Jose’s.
How well a club performs short-handed and on the power play can be crucial to success in the Stanley Cup Final.
Stamkos, who had surgery on April 4, led the Lightning with 36 goals and was second on the team in scoring with 64 points – two fewer than Nikita Kucherov (30 goals, 36 assists, 66 points) this season.
“They have a really unsafe power play with (Joe) Thornton, (Joe) Pavelski and then (Brent) Burns on the back end”, he said.
Can the Sharks do the same to the Penguins? Over the next six weeks they became a catalyst for Pittsburgh’s late-season surge to the point that when Malkin finally returned for the opening round of the postseason, the 2012 NHL MVP was put on what amounted to a third line alongside Chris Kunitz and rookie Bryan Rust.
The Penguins’ offense is producing 35.1 shots on goal per game in the playoffs and they outshot the Lightning 269-178 in the Eastern Conference finals, including margins of 41-21 in Game 2, 48-28 in Game 3 and 39-17 in Game 7. San Jose has the second-most productive power play in these playoffs, scoring on 27 percent of its chances, but was just 4-for-19 in the Western Conference final against St. Louis.
In all, seven Penguins players appeared in a Game 7 for the first time, an unusually high number in a sport where veteran teams such as the Blackhawks (3) and Kings (2) combined to win five of the previous six Cups.
He may not be as high-profile as the veteran name I was considering including, Joe Thornton, nor as renowned for his rookie season as Tomas Hertl was, but that’s what makes him unsafe. The last half of the season, I think we had the best record in the league. Throughout recent history, the Sharks have been great at possessing the puck and making the other teams chase. “If you’re 100 percent committed – forwards working for the defense, everyone working for the goalie – it’s very hard to do, and it’s demanding. It was the loudest I’ve heard a building in all my years in this league”, said Penguins coach Mike Sullivan of the crowd of 18,600 at the Penguins’ Consol Energy Center. Ward scored two goals in both Game 5 and Game 6 for the Sharks against the Blues, including the series game-winner.
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The two regular-season games between the pair were split, but here we look at three key battles likely to prove pivotal in separating the teams over a seven-game series. “A team that has gone through a lot this year, different types of adversity, and come through with flying colors”, Stamkos said.
