Jones walls off Ducks, Sharks take 2-0 lead
Clutch San Jose goalie makes 28 saves, 11 in dramatic third period
ANAHEIM >> The Sharks are coming back home with a commanding lead in their first-round playoff series against the Anaheim Ducks.
Marcus Sorensen, Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl all scored and goalie Martin Jones finished with 28 saves — including 11 in a heart-stopping third period — as the Sharks held on for a thrilling 3-2 win over the Ducks in Game 2 at Honda Center to take a 2-0 lead in the series between the California rivals.
Games 3 and 4 are back in San Jose at SAP Center on Monday and Wednesday, respectively. The Sharks, who beat the Ducks 3-0 on Thursday in Game 1, are 3-0 in their franchise’s playoff history when they’ve won the first two games of a series on the road.
“We don’t have to worry about overconfidence. That’s not part of our DNA,” Sharks coach Pete DeBoer said. “The success we’ve had this year has been about having
buy-in and attention to detail and getting contributions from everybody. When you get that you aren’t intimidated.”
Jones was at his best in the third period. After Evander Kane took a delay-of-game penalty with 13:48 to go in regulation, Jones made three saves to help kill the penalty and preserve the Sharks’ tenuous one-goal lead.
“That was obviously a big penalty kill,” Jones said. “It wasn’t the prettiest game for me today, but sometimes when you’re maybe fighting it a little bit and you grind out a win, that’s even more rewarding.”
The Sharks and Ducks traded goals in the second period, as San Jose held a 3-2 lead going into the final 20 minutes of regulation time.
Hertl scored his first goal of the series just 1:11 into the second period, finishing off a quick transition strike with a backhand shot that got past Ducks goalie John Gibson for a 3-1 Sharks lead.
Defenseman Paul Martin was whistled for tripping at the 6:30 mark of the second, and the Ducks capitalized. Hampus Lindholm took a pass from Ryan Getzlaf and beat Jones, who was knocked off-balance by the skate of Brenden Dillon.
Jones was making his 32nd straight playoff start for the Sharks. Jones made 25 saves in Thursday’s Game 1, including 12 in the third period to preserve what was his fifth career playoff shutout. Only 14 of those saves, though, came at even strength. He faced 17 shots at even strength through two periods on Saturday.
“It was pretty clear what their game plan was today,” Jones said. “They were trying to push us out of the game physically, but all
night, it was a really great response from us. We didn’t back down. We stuck with our game playing, we were taking hits to make plays.”
The first period was predictably intense, but the Sharks absorbed an early Ducks onslaught.
Jakob Silfverberg scored the Ducks’ first goal of the series 40 seconds into the game, as his wrist shot
from inside the blue line got past Jones. With 14:14 left in the first, Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin ran over Kevin Labanc near the boards inside the Sharks’ zone, again sending the sold-out Orange County crowd into a frenzy.
The Sharks responded at the 9:41 mark of the first, with Sorensen collecting’s Dillon’s shot that went off
the end boards and tucking it across the goal line to tie the game 1-1.
Then with the Sharks on their first power play of the game and their eighth of the series, Couture took a pass from Labanc on the left wing, took a stride to the middle and beat Gibson with a backhand shot for a 2-1 Sharks lead at the 14:41 mark.
The Sharks knew the Ducks would play a lot better than they did in Game 1, starting with cutting down the amount of times they were shorthanded. Ducks players felt they weren’t moving their feel well enough, which played a part in two interference calls, one holding penalty and three slashing infractions.
There was more than anecdotal evidence to believe that the Ducks would be a different team.
Including the result of Thursday’s game, the Ducks had fallen behind 1-0 in four of their last five playoff series.
Last year in their second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers, Anaheim fell behind 2-0 before it rallied to win four of the next five. Included in that turnaround was a miraculous comeback in Game 5 where they erased a 3-0 Oilers lead in the last 3:16 of regulation time before winning in double overtime.
The Sharks have never lost a playoff series when they’ve won the first two games as the visiting team, going 3-0 in that regard all time as a franchise. In 2016, the Sharks won two games at Staples Center to start a first-round series against Los Angeles, and closed out the Kings in five games.
Last season, the Sharks won Game 1 in Edmonton, lost the second game and were beaten in three of the next four in a six-game series loss to the Oilers.
“We did our job so, you don’t want to look too far ahead,” Sharks center Eric Fehr said. “You can’t expect it to be easy when you’re at home. As long as we have the right mindset coming home that we have to work the same way, play the same game, it’ll be good for us.”