Now on the San Jose side, Martin said every player handles momentum swings differently, whether in a game or a series. And the Stanley Cup will be in the house. Teams peak at certain times and Game 5 may well have been that for the Penguins. And it might. It just might. The Sharks opened the scoring in Game 5 for the first time in the series, thanks to defenseman Brent Burns.
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They tried just about everything to reverse course, including shuffling the lineup and moving game-day morning skates from SAP Center to Sharks Ice. They get the opportunity to help extend it Sunday.
“You’ve got to execute, you’ve got to compete, ” Sharks center Joe Pavelski said. “It’s important for everybody in this room”. “We’ll try to get it done [Sunday] night and go home happy”. At every step, the reputation of the Sharks as a team that deflated and sagged out of the picture at the first sign of adversity was destroyed.
He scored the first goal to give San Jose its first lead of the series.
Logan Couture would tie the game for San Jose, but the “Shark Tank” did not celebrate for long.
Now comes the opportunity to do something even more extraordinary.
Sidney Crosby knew Trevor Daley’s mother wanted to see him lift the Stanley Cup, so he made sure the injured defenseman was the first one to get it.
It’s hardly unthinkable for the Sharks to dream big.
After the Penguins beat the San Jose Sharks 3-1 in Game 6 to win the Cup, Pittsburgh’s captain handed it to Daley, who missed the final nine games of the playoffs because of a broken left ankle. The feeling here? If the Sharks again get great goaltending from Martin Jones on Sunday, find a little more energy and will to disrupt Pittsburgh’s offensive flow and take Sunday’s game into the third period with the outcome still in play, then the beloved Los Tiburones can figure out a way to win on their home rink.
In order to do so, San Jose will need another huge effort from Martin Jones who was simply fantastic in thwarting the Penguins in Game 5. The Penguins are trying to win their fourth Cup in franchise history. There is no false arrogance about that. The Penguins have outshot the Sharks in four of five games in the finals.
Asked whether a goaltender takes pride in staving off elimination, he hesitantly acknowledged that a game that saved his team’s season in June was different from one played in October.
One more Tank battle.
The Sharks will need to make history for that to happen.
“He played lights out”, Cole said.
Speed kills, and it wins a Stanley Cup. They finished the season 1-8-1 under those circumstances to end up 2015-16 with a home record of 18-20-3. There’s no speech I’m going to give Patty Marleau and… make him play harder. That’s for movies … and Sunday football, when you’re playing 11 or 12 games a year.
“I haven”t noticed anything,” Couture said, “except they”ve thrown us out (of the faceoff circle) more than they”ve thrown him out.
“I’m not talking just teams I’ve coached in the regular season in the National Hockey League”.
“We have to do a better job of taking those chances away going forward”, said Justin Braun, who forms the Sharks’ shutdown defense pair with Vlasic. The fans are clearly all in.
Dumoulin’s second goal of the playoffs came 26 seconds into the power play.
“That’s all we can do”, Couture said. “We’d like to win the next game, regardless of where it’s being played”.
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In the days leading up to Game 5, sports historians (you know, something anyone can be now that Wikipedia exists?) began crawling out of the woodwork and appearing on local radio shows, reminding everyone of this dreaded streak of championship “futility”.
