Sharks can’t stop Toronto
The Sharks entered Thursday with a four-game home winning streak. The NHL’s best road team put an end to that.
Toronto’s Kasperi Kapanen scored his second goal of the game with his team shorthanded and the Maple Leafs won for the fifth time in six games, beating the Sharks 5-3 at SAP Center on Thursday night.
John Tavares had a goal to extend his scoring streak to seven games, and Josh Leivo and Mitch Marner also had goals to give Toronto its eighth win in nine road games this season.
Frederik Andersen made 42 saves and assisted on Marner’s insurance goal with a pass to the opposite blue line late in the third period to seal the victory.
Joe Pavelski scored his fourth goal in the past three games, and Kevin Labanc and Marc-Edouard-Vlasic also scored for the Sharks, who got 29 saves from Martin Jones.
The Maple Leafs took the lead in the second period thanks to two odd-man rushes. Leivo tied the game early in the period when he converted a two-on-one off a pass from Tyler Ennis.
Then, with the Sharks on the power play midway through the second, Toronto took advantage of a turnover at the blue line by Pavelski to take the lead. Marner got the puck ahead to a streaking Kapanen, who went in all alone and beat Jones to make it 4-3.
Marner scored with 6:06 remaining to make it a two-goal game.
The teams had an actionpacked first period that fea- tured five goals, 28 shots and a penalty off the opening draw as the Sharks targeted Nazem Kadri for ripping out a chunk of Joe Thornton’s beard last season.
Barclay Goodrow went right after Kadri as soon as the game started, giving the Leafs a power play eight seconds into the game. That led to the first goal when Tavares’ centering pass deflected off Vlasic’s skate and into the net just after Goodrow got out of the box.
The Sharks tied it with help from a fortunate bounce of their own as Erik Karlsson’s dump-in bounced in front of the net instead of going around the boards. Andersen didn’t see the puck and Labanc knocked it into the open net.
Patrick Marleau — in his second game as a visitor in San Jose after spending his first 19 seasons with the Sharks before signing with the Maple Leafs in July 2017 — then got his first point against his former team. Marleau, who had 1,082 points for the Sharks, took advantage of a bad line change to find Kapanen on a two-on-one.
Pavelski tied it with a deflection off a pass from Brent Burns on a power play about a minute later, and then set up Vlasic for his goal late in the period that made it 3-2.