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Sharks rebound against
Rangers
1st period power play goals propel San
Jose
12/20/08 - By Mike Lee
The game
after the 6-0 drubbing in Detroit on Thursday would tell a lot about the Sharks
and their ability to bounce back from that lopsided defeat. Facing the best
team in the Atlantic Division also set the stage for a little drama on Saturday
night at HP Pavilion. San Jose took advantage with 2 power play goals early in
the game, then held on for a 3-2 win over the visiting New York Rangers.
Playing the first game of a home stand after any road trip has
historically been tough for the Sharks, but they brushed aside the loss to the
Red Wings and showed the Eastern Conference that they will be a team to be
reckoned with.
Three different Sharks scored goals and Evgeni Nabokov
turned aside 32 shots to record his 18th victory of the year.
"Well,
we got the win," said Sharks head coach Todd McLellan. "The specialty teams
were very good. I thought Nabby hung in there in the end when we ran out of
gas. We were a pretty determined team and I say that including the last 15 or
18 minutes when we had nothing left and we were still determined. We found a
way, and that's the sign of a good team, so we'll take it."
Any
affects of their Motor City letdown were history from the opening faceoff. San
Jose took control of the puck out-shooting New York 7-1 in the first 5 minutes
of play. That statistic was helped by the fact that New York sent two players
to the penalty box less than a minute apart.
A Paul Mara holding
penalty 2:31 in the game was magnified when centerman Blair Betts followed him
for high sticking Marc-Edouard Vlasic 52 ticks later.
The Sharks
looked as if they would misfire with the 2-man advantage, until Dan Boyle
ripped a shot over Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist's left shoulder. Boyle
took a cross-ice feed from Jo Thornton before uncorking his shot from the top
of the left circle.
The Boyle goal came with 5 seconds remaining on
Mara's penalty, which meant that Betts was forced to remain sequestered for
another minute. The Sharks power play would strike again 25 seconds later.
Boyle was pinching along the Rangers end boards and helped the puck
kick out to the front of the net, where Joe Pavelski tried putting a backhand
attempt on net. That was denied by Lundqvist, but the puck slid over to
Jonathan Cheechoo near the top of the crease. Cheechoo's attempt bounced off
Lundqvist, but landed on Ryane Clowe stick for the put back and a 2-0 San Jose
lead.
"It was quite important," McLellan said of the 5-on-3 chance.
"Obviously to get the 2-0 lead early, but also it took away from their
physicality I think. For the first half of the game they weren't as aggressive
as they were in the last half, so that bought us some time for being a tired
club. It also allowed us to be a little confident after giving up six and not
getting any in Detroit."
"[Our penalty kill] has been so good and you're going
have one of those nights and obviously this is the one, and hopefully the last
one, mind you," said Rangers head coach Tom Renney. "But our penalty kill has
been so good this year. It was a tough way to start the game, but our guys
battled. We were able to hang in there, turn the tide a bit, get a couple goals
of our own and make a game of it."
Cheechoo put the Rangers on the
power play at 8:30 by dumping the puck over the glass, but Nigel Dawes offset
the penalty with a boarding penalty 1:29 later. The Sharks went on a brief
power play, but that proved to be counter productive after Clowe failed to
contain a pass from Boyle along the right wing boards.
Nikolai Zherdev
raced passed Clowe than charged up the ice with Scott Gomez on a 2-on-1 break.
Sharks defenseman Christian Ehrhoff tried to seal off Gomez as an option, so
Zherdev whipped a shot through Nabokov's 5-hole.
Patrick Marleau and
Joe Thornton teamed up to push the Sharks lead back to 2 goals at 6:20 of the
2nd period on a beautiful exchange. Racing around the end boards, Thornton
pursued the puck from left to right, then zipped a pass out front to Marleau
for the one-time attempt. Lundqvist tried to shut off the near post, but the
shot found the top shelf for Marleau's 17th of the season.
New York
made a game of it less than 4 minutes later on Ryan Callahan's 9th goal of the
season. Brandon Dubinsky put a shot on net from the left side, but a big
rebound from Nabokov allowed Callahan to chip a shot over the fallen goaltender
after crashing the net.
Chris Drury missed on a golden opportunity in
the 1st minute of the 3rd period, when he elected to shoot from in tight,
rather than dish the puck while the Rangers were on a power play.
The
Rangers would outshoot the Sharks 17-7 in the final period, and it appeared
that New York was wearing down the Sharks offense. San Jose was stuck trying to
change players twice for lengthy periods, but Nabokov bailed them out each
time.
"There were a couple of times there where we had them sort of
spent and we weren't able to get it in the net," Said Renny. "Their goaltender
played great. We waited a little too long to sort of turn up the heat a little
bit on them. Had we done that a little bit earlier, we would have had a
different outcome."
Lundqvist was pulled it the final minute of
regulation, but the Rangers couldn't get any serious attacks mounted. Bungled
puck handling in their own zone cost the Rangers a chance at even mounting an
attack.
That point was not lost on Renny.
"We needed to
manage the puck a little bit better down the last minute and bit there and get
it behind them and force them to do what we were able to do in the third
period, and that was to turn their backs, find pucks and get ourselves tied."
Game Notes:
The Sharks reassigned Lukas Kaspar back to
Worcester on Saturday. The Sharks hosted the Rangers at HP Pavilion for the
first time since Nov. 2, 2006, which ended in a 3-1 Rangers win. Before
tonight's game the Sharks had not defeated the Rangers since Oct. 22, 2001 at
Madison Square Garden (5-1).
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What did you
think of this game? Post your comments on the
Feeder Forums |
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1 |
2 |
3 |
T |
| NYR |
1 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
| SJ |
2 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
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| 1st period - 1, SJ,
Boyle 11 (Thornton, Blake), 4:27, (pp). 2, SJ, Clowe 14 (Cheechoo, Pavelski),
4:52, (pp). 3, NYR, Zherdev 12 (unassisted), 10:34, (sh). |
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| 2nd period - 4, SJ,
Marleau 17 (Thornton, Setoguchi), 6:20. 5, NYR, Callahan 9 (Dubinsky),
9:56. |
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| 1st period - Mara, NYR
(holding), 2:31; Betts, NYR (high sticking), 3:23; Cheechoo, SJ (delay of game
- puck over glass), 8:30; Dawes, NYR (boarding), 9:59. |
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| 2nd period - Sjostrom,
NYR (interference), 7:32; Pavelski, SJ (hooking), 20:00. |
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| 3rd period - Rozsival,
NYR (roughing), 5:18. |
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Shots |
Saves |
| NYR - Lundqvist |
30 |
27 |
| SJ - Nabokov |
34 |
32 |
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1 |
2 |
3 |
T |
| NYR |
9 |
8 |
17 |
34 |
| SJ |
13 |
10 |
7 |
30 |
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| Referees: Walsh,
Auger. Linesmen: Heyer, Nowak. |
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