Joonas Donskoi delivered an absolutely handsome goal in overtime to give the San Jose Sharks their first ever Stanley Cup Final victory on Saturday night in front of a raucous crowd.
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It gave the Sharks their first-ever win in the Stanley Cup Final and cut the Pittsburgh Penguins’ lead to 2-1.
Ben Lovejoy gave the Penguins a dream start with a rare goal five minutes, 29 seconds into the first period, but the Sharks did not take long to respond.
Even with that edge in shots in the series it has still been incredibly close with all three games being decided by a single goal (two in overtime, one with less than three minutes to play), while the Penguins are only holding a narrow 7-6 edge in goals.
The Penguins delivered a sucker punch to the Sharks in the closing stages of the second period, with Patric Hornqvist scoring with 53 seconds remaining.
Just as a four-minute double minor to Nick Bonino for high sticking was expiring, Ward carried the puck across the blue line and teed up a slap shot that got through Matt Murray to tie the game 2-2 with 11:12 to go in the third period.
Ironically, with all the times the Penguins got in San Jose’s shooting lanes, Ward fired a fairly innocent slapshot from just inside the painted Stanley Cup Final logo in the very high slot of the offensive zone off the rush that Murray saw all the way, yet somehow couldn’t stop at the 8:48 mark of the third period.
Martin Jones has been the San Jose Sharks best player in the Stanley Cup Final. “You need that when you get to this point”. Two of those three teams to rally after losing the first two games on the road have done it in the past seven years, including Pittsburgh itself in 2009 against Detroit.
“You try to just stay with it”.
The biggest reason the shot disparity does not bother him DeBoer that much right now?
Regardless of who might be on the ice, the Sharks would like to create a few more opportunities for themselves to get on the power play. “It was our best game so far and we had confidence we were going to win”, said Donskoi.
Coach Peter DeBoer said the Sharks had played better in Game 2 than Game 1 and he fully expected them to be better in Game 3 than they were in Game 2.
Sidney Crosby snagged the opening faceoff for the Penguins away from Sharks center Logan Couture, with the speedy Penguins taking a 2-0 series lead to the Bay Area. Sharks defenseman Justin Braun has two goals in the past two games, matching his total from the previous 40 contests.
Murray was helped by a strong penalty kill that thwarted two chances from San Jose’s potent power-play, and once again never trailed in the game. But then as Bonino was just about jump back out, Kris Letang failed to get the puck deep in the man advantage’s waning seconds, and it went back the other way.
And this was hardly his first big Sharks goal.
The Sharks also managed to win despite Tomas Hertl’s absence from the game because of a day-to-day lower-body injury.
“The teams are learning a little more about each other every game”, said Crosby. They left the time zone for the first time during the playoffs, dealt with a hostile environment, as well as poor ice conditions. “Just going to hold on to it for a split second”. They also know they’re going back to Pittsburgh.
“(DeBoer) told me to wait a couple shifts”, Couture said.
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Smartly, he opted to credit San Jose with stout defence in this series rather than issuing a sad lament about his own shortcomings or questioning the officiating.
