If you believe St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock, the “Shark Tank” in San Jose is one of the more difficult buildings to play in for a visiting team.
Yet his young and relatively inexperienced Blues squad now has a commanding 3-1 series lead over the Sharks after a second straight win on San Jose ice Thursday night.
Losing Game 4 by a 2-1 final, the Sharks are now just 5-6 in their last 11 playoff games at HP Pavilion. What about their last 11 road playoff games? Also 5-6.
So facing an uphill battle, being on the road doesn’t seem like that much of a disadvantage for the Sharks. They need to win three games in a row, two of them on the road. The Blues have done exactly that over the last three games. Why can’t the Sharks do the same?
“There’s no reason why we can’t,” said Sharks forward Logan Couture.
“Why not us?” asked Sharks coach Todd McLellan about the possibility of a playoff team winning a series after falling behind three games to one.
Perhaps one thing in which the Sharks can take solace from the Game 4 defeat was that they owned the lion’s share of the offensive opportunities despite scoring just the one late goal. Joe Thornton may have gotten the lone tally for San Jose but the Sharks could easily have scored a few more goals had the puck bounced their way a bit.
However, this is the postseason and there is only one thing with which players are concerned.
“All that matters at this point of the year is wins and losses,” said Couture. “We lost so we got to move on and get our minds ready for Game 5.”
“You can’t take consolation in having a good game in the playoffs,” echoed McLellan. “You have to find ways to win.”
That said, despite only out-shooting the Blues 25-24, the Sharks definitely seemed to be the more dangerous team Thursday night. Couture had a breakaway opportunity early, Marleau had multiple scoring chances and Ryane Clowe had a puck bounce just over his stick right in the crease.
“I thought this was our best 60-minute effort of the series,” said McLellan. “I thought tonight was probably our best effort as a whole.”
Despite the strong showing, when the puck isn’t bouncing your way, it’s simply not in the cards. Certainly the Blues blocked a fair amount of shots, but the opportunities were more than plentiful for San Jose.
Blues netminder Brian Elliot was once again solid between the pipes, but not many of the saves were jaw-droppers. Pucks just did not want to settle on Sharks sticks all game long, as the majority of chances were misfires rather than unbelievable saves.
Scoring the first goal will be key for the Sharks in Saturday’s Game 5. The team that scores first is undefeated so far in this series and getting the lead is crucial against the defensive-minded Blues.
In Thursday’s contest, the Blues’ B.J. Crombeen beat Sharks goalie Antti Niemi at the 7:12 mark of the first period to open the scoring. At that point, you could sense the result to come.
The Sharks had just put together a couple of strong shifts of their own to no success and then a quick strike from St. Louis seemed like it would be too hard to overcome. When you consider that the Sharks had lost all six games against the Blues this season after giving up the first goal, the writing was on the wall.
The Blues would make the score 2-0 with eight minutes remaining in the third period. San Jose’s penalty kill once again came back to bite the Sharks as Andy McDonald batted home a bouncing puck.
Thornton would capitalize with 1:07 remaining to pull within a goal but the Sharks could not muster up even a remotely close chance in the remaining seconds.
If the Sharks are to push this duel back here to San Jose for a Game 6, they could use some offense from the face of the franchise. Patrick Marleau has no points through four games. Historically the Sharks forward has come through with some big game-winning goals, but they need a complete effort from start to finish.
Not just from Marleau, but from the whole team.
