In the third period, the Sharks managed just two shots as Pittsburgh grabbed a 3-1 victory.
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The Penguins’ offense surged with just under four minutes to play, and Jones had to produce outstanding saves twice on Sidney Crosby – who entered the evening with just one goal in the previous nine games – and once on Conor Sheary in the span of a few seconds to keep the Sharks within one.
After failing to clinch the title at home on Thursday last week, the Penguins returned to San Jose, California, with a 3-2 series lead and used a clinical display of hockey to ensure the championship would not require a decisive seventh game.
For Crosby, the 3-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks and the ensuing second Cup of his career was yet another chapter to his mushrooming legacy, one in which he now has won as many as the legendary Mario Lemieux. “Seeing him on the puck in the offensive zone this playoff, you couldn’t get it off him and there were times in a game where you really needed to see that to help a guy’s confidence and you saw it tonight”. But general manager Jim Rutherford replaced Johnston with Mike Sullivan, and a team built around speed was born.
For the first time since 2009, the Pittsburgh Penguinsare Stanley Cup champions.
“I have a greater appreciation this time around”, Crosby said.
“I think he believes in himself, ” Sullivan said. “We got together as a team and came together”.
The turnover this season was a major reason for the turnaround in fortunes after six straight years of playoff disappointments.
The Penguins had 12 different scorers in the final, although Crosby, the Conn Smythe Trophy victor and team captain, never had a goal.
“[Crosby’s] the consummate leader”, Sullivan said. “He’s that good in my mind”.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I do have to disagree with the Conn Smythe selection of Sidney Crosby. His numbers don’t indicate the impact he had on helping this team win, or the impact he had on a game-to-game basis.
Crosby was much better in the second half, too.
According to our numbers, they had just a 0.84% chance of winning the Stanley Cup. “Everybody shares a big piece of it. It’s truly a team win”. They put 52 percent of shots in their favor this past season, the 10th most in the National Hockey League, and won’t turn over a large portion of their roster.
“Mike came in and made it pretty clear how he wanted us to play, what he expected from each individual guy”. Any of those rounds could have gone the other way, particularly the Eastern Conference Finals where the Lightning played with out Ben Bishop and Steven Stamkos for nearly the entirety.
Patric Hornqvist scored into an empty net with 1:02 left in the third period to seal the win.
“I think we were pushing from the second period on, so it’s not for a lack of effort”, defenseman Brent Burns said. “It was a fun two months playing the way we did, playing hard for each other and winning games”.
Logan Couture scored the lone goal for the Sharks, whose first trip to the final in their 25-year history ended two wins short of a title.
But San Jose – and Sharks goaltender Martin Jones, in particular – didn’t make it easy on them.
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“The end is like hitting a wall”, coach Peter DeBoer said. The rough start to this season that led to a coach being fired. “We’re going to enjoy it for a while”. “It’s just tough right now”.
