San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Disappointing outing against last-place L.A.
The Sharks eyed this last stretch of games before a threeday holiday break as a time to finish fast. All was going well during five consecutive wins before a loss to a good Winnipeg team Thursday.
Then Saturday happened. Sure, San Jose earned a point when Joe Pavelski scored in the final 30 seconds of regulation to force overtime. But the hosts skated off with a disappointing 3-2 loss to Los Angeles — which is last in the overall NHL standings — as SAP Center after Ilya Kovalchuk scored his second goal of the game on a breakaway in the extra session. “We came back at the end — that’s good — but we have better,” Sharks defenseman Brent Burns said. “You don’t like to leave points on the table. You’ve got to get two points every night.”
The last-place Kings weren’t the easy touch the Sharks were hoping to face. Instead, Los Angeles zipped out to a 10-1 advantage in shots, scored first and added another goal early in the third.
“We knew we weren’t feeling great early in the game, you could tell by the way we played today,” Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson said. “We still stuck with it, but their goalie played great and we couldn’t find a way to score early in the game to get us going.”
Not until 28-year-old firstyear forward Lukas Radil timed his skate through the slot to tip a Timo Meier pass over Jonathan Quick at 10:18 of the third did the Sharks solve the Los Angeles goalie.
“It was good to see him start that play, and Timo made a great pass to him,” Pavelski said of Radil, who has three goals in his 12 games. “It really turned the game back around for us.”
San Jose still had to find a way to tie it, and that opportunity didn’t present itself until goalie Martin Jones was pulled for an extra attacker at 18:09.
A Kings timeout, one shot on goal, two clears followed by two L.A. icings and a Sharks timeout followed. San Jose finally won a draw to Burns, whose drive was redirected by Pavelski for goal No. 23 and a tie.
“He just goes to the dirty areas all the time and works on that craft,” Burns said of Pavelski’s knack for tipping pucks. “For anybody trying to get 5-10 more goals, that’s the spot to do it. It’s not going to be off the rush or on breakaways.”
The euphoria quickly wore off when Kovalchuk collected a hard carom and was off to the races on the left side. He beat Jones at 2:29 of overtime for his seventh goal.
“That’s a team, regardless of where they are in the standings, you know you’re going to have to play a man’s game to create offense against them,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said.
“You’ve got to beat those teams, but you are talking about L.A.-San Jose, and as long as I’ve been here, they’ve been one-goal games,” Pavelski said. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve missed the playoffs or not.”
The Sharks spent the first 40 minutes wavering between the look of a team not ready for a 1 p.m. start and one getting robbed on the few good chances it managed. San Jose earned only one power play, during which it didn’t record a shot and chased the Kings around for possession for most of the advantage.
“We’re happy to scrape a point away,” Pavelski said. “If you think about the other night (Thursday against Winnipeg), we played pretty good and come away with nothing. I think we’ll take this one over the other night.”
Briefly: Kings rookie wing Austin Wagner did not return after sustaining a head injury as a result of an Erik Karlsson hit at center in the second. … Los Angeles played its 4,000th regular-season game.
Ross McKeon is a freelance writer. Twitter: @rossmckeon