Sharks finish sweep of Ducks with 2-1 win
Jones and Hertl step up for San Jose against Anaheim
The San Jose Sharks won the first three games of their first-round series against the Anaheim Ducks thanks to having more speed, better depth, and discipline.
They completed the sweep thanks largely to Martin Jones.
Jones frustrated the Ducks with stellar plays over the final two periods and Tomas Hertl answered Anaheim’s only goal midway through the third with a game-winner just over a minute later, sending the Sharks into the second round with a 2-1 victory in Game 4 on Wednesday night.
“It’s tough to play an elimination game when you got an opportunity to sweep a really good team like that,” San Jose coach Peter DeBoer said. “You rarely see sweeps. That’s because there’s so much parity and the other teams are so evenly matched. This is a tough game to play. I thought we had some good moments and some moments we didn’t handle well, but we found a way, and that’s been the story all year.” Hertl scored just 1:16 after the Ducks finally got a puck past Jones when he deflected a point shot from Marc-Edouard Vlasic past John Gibson. San Jose then held on to advance to the second round against Vegas Golden Knights.
Fourth-line winger Marcus Sorensen had a goal for the third straight game to open the scoring for San Jose and Jones did most of the rest of the work with 30 saves. He robbed Corey Perry several times and got help from a replay review that negated an apparent tying goal early in the third.
“When you play a team up against the wall like that you know they’re going to come with a push,” Jones said. “They gave us everything they had and it was tough but the guys did a great job. We had a couple of
huge penalty kills, some huge blocked shots. It was a gutsy way to win there.”
Andrew Cogliano scored the lone goal for the Ducks, who were outscored 16-4 in the series and swept for the first time since 1999 against Detroit. Gibson finished with 22 saves.
“We came at them pretty hard, obviously a couple of bounces here and there and it’s a different hockey game,” captain Ryan Getzlaf said. “Their goaltender played absolutely outstanding, we just couldn’t get it by him.”
Gibson was unable to match the play of Jones, who had a shutout in Game 1, set a San Jose playoff record with 45 regulation saves in Game 3 and posted a .970 save percentage for the series.