Coming off two straight shutouts by Cam Talbot and the Oilers, the San Jose Sharks needed their big names to step up in a big way and change the course of this series, and man did they ever last night at the SAP Center.
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After head coach Todd McLellan preached and preached about the modus operandi of the team he used to coach of jumping all over you the first 10 minutes, the Oilers allowed the winning goal 15 seconds into the game and were down 2-0 by 11:02. He’s an elite player and he has been for a long time. Neither team’s big offensive producers have made a splash in the series so far.
McDavid has been held relatively in check this his first career postseason series, but his skating is so explosive and his playmaking so creative that it feels like he could score every time he touches the puck.
Jones had to make a stop of Mark Letestu, who capped a four-on-two power-play rush at with a wrister shot from the slot the goalie stopped and froze under his pads. But he thinks the Oilers had been the better team before this humiliation. He hadn’t scored any game-winners since March 9, 2015, while with the Vancouver Canucks.
Already, Talbot, said, he had put the game out of his mind. “He’s playing at a new level”. That’s what we need in the playoffs. “I felt this was my best game of the series”.
“We were just ready”. Chris Scheetz from CISN Country 103.9 was on the sidewalk in San Jose during the Tuesday morning rush hour, trying to get drivers to honk for the Oilers.
“We were able to create more on the power play and scored on our Grade-A chances”, Couture said.
The Sharks needed only 15 seconds to get on the board for the first time since Melker Karlsson’s overtime victor in Game 1 when Pavelski deflected a shot by defenceman Justin Braun past Talbot.
Luckily this team has a veteran coach who can give Edmonton players what the need – a short memory. Laurent Brossoit replaced Talbot – and gave up a second goal to Pavelski, again on a power play, less than four minutes later.
“Joe Thornton would help us in a lot of different areas, but we don’t have him and we’ve got to find a way with the group we do have”, Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said on an early-morning conference call Saturday.
One thing that’s also clear is that the young guns of the Oilers, namely Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl don’t seem to be handling the way stars get treated by their opponents in the playoffs. Edmonton center Connor McDavid, whose 100 points (30 goals, 70 assists) led the National Hockey League, has one goal and one assist in the series. The top line came to life with Marleau skating on Thornton and Pavelski’s left wing, a trio that found success together during the first half of the season.
The Sharks’ power play has suffered from the absence of dominant center Joe Thornton. “I don’t know if there was really any time to let frustration settle in”, said Pavelski.
“We’ve been saying we have confidence in it”, Joe Thornton said.
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San Jose then took the game over in the second starting when Marleau scored on an early power play. Connor McDavid wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen tonight and recent hero Zack Kassian had a solo opportunity against Martin Jones but nothing more.
