Power-play unit has Jumbo hole
The Sharks know they’re going to be surrounded by friendly faces when they return to SAP Center on Sunday with their best-of-seven playoff series against Edmonton reduced to a best-of-five.
And the biggest friendly face they’d love to see back — shall we suggest Jumbo friendly face? — is maybe just what they need to help get an anemic power play on track in this Western Conference quarterfinal set.
If Sharks center Joe Thornton is eager to test his injured left knee, even if it’s less than 100 percent, there may be no better time than Game 3. San Jose wasn’t good enough in any
situation of Game 2 on Friday, but an 0-for-6 showing on the power play — in addition to surrendering two shorthanded goals — in a 2-0 loss had to bother Thornton to the core.
“Joe Thornton would help us in a lot of different areas, but we don’t have him and we’ve got to find a way with the group we do have,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said on an early-morning conference call Saturday. “We didn’t in Game 2. So we’ll get back to it in Game 3.”
A lot can transpire before Sunday night’s face-off, so don’t discount a possible Thornton return. He missed the final three games of the regular season and the first two playoff games after injuring his knee at Vancouver on April 2.
The Sharks rallied from a 2-0 first-period deficit in Game 1 of the Oilers series to win 3-2 in overtime, a contest that included the team converting one of six chances on the power play.
“We had a power-play goal in the first game. We didn’t in the second game. You can’t overreact to that,” DeBoer said. “I think our power play in the second game mimicked our 5-on-5 play. We weren’t hungry enough. We got outworked in a lot of areas.”
Without Thornton, DeBoer tried several combinations, to no avail. The biggest change was putting two defensemen on the ice during power plays instead of incorporating a fourth forward to play opposite rear guard Brent Burns. Defensemen David Schlemko, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Justin Braun and Paul Martin all got a chance in Game 2, but nothing clicked.
Up front, Logan Couture, center Tomas Hertl and tip-master Joe Pavelski were on the No. 1 unit, but it hardly resembled the familiar group that includes Thornton and Patrick Marleau.
Even with Thornton, the team’s specialty unit fought for success down the stretch. The Sharks were 7-for-48 on the power play in March and 1-for-8 in April’s last four regular-season contests for a combined 14.3 percent success rate. That helped to bring the season average down to 16.7 percent, which ranked 25th in the league and lowest of all playoff participants. During last year’s run to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Sharks were 17-for-63 (27 percent) on the power play in postseason series against Los Angeles, Nashville and St. Louis as they won the West.
“I liked it in Game 1. I didn’t like it in Game 2, just like our 5-on-5 play,” DeBoer said.
All in all, the Sharks have to be happy they’re not in a 2-0 hole.
“We expected a tough game and that they would respond,” DeBoer said of the Oilers in Game 2. “You don’t see too many teams lose the first two games at home. We leave Edmonton with a split, which is what we wanted coming in here, and now we’ve got to go home and play really well at home.”