Oilers send Sharks home
Anemic offense means early exit in postseason
SAN JOSE — The weather forecast for Edmonton on Monday night calls for snow and a low of 27 degrees.
The Sharks would have loved to have been there.
No need to pack the suitcases now, not after Saturday night’s 3-1 loss to the Oilers in Game 6 of their first-round
series. That means no Game 7 in Alberta on Monday. The only cold the Sharks will feel is courtesy of the ice packs clinging to their bruised bodies as they head into the offseason.
Saturday’s defeat eliminated the beloved Los Tiburones from the Stanley Cup tournament three rounds before they went home a year ago, when they reached the Final and lost in six games to the Pittsburgh Penguins. But that result was more understandable, if just as nonpalatable. The Penguins were a team full of veteran stars who had experienced a previous championship parade. Saturday, the Sharks were finished off by an Oilers’ squad of young whippersnappers, many of whom had never been involved in any postseason games.
It is entirely possible, though, that all of those playoff games last spring and summer, added to some World Cup of Hockey games by several top Sharks, on top of the regular season grind ... well, all of it could have piled up and helped create what we saw over the six playoff nights.
Pete DeBoer, the Sharks’ coach, said in his postgame media remarks that he did not want to dive too deep into certain elements of what happened because he wanted to give Edmonton proper credit. But then DeBoer finished that remark with the bottom line.
“My gut feeling is, we ran out of some gas here in the last month,” DeBoer said.
Oh, the Sharks didn’t go softly. They stormed back from a 2-0 deficit Saturday with a third-period goal by Patrick Marleau, who may have been playing his final game at SAP Center in a Sharks uniform because of his upcoming free agency. They had a glorious chance to tie the game on a power play in the final five minutes when Joe Pavelski hit both the crossbar and the right post on a backhand shot. More desperation followed and some more near misses. And then an empty-net goal by Edmonton ended the misery.
History will record that the Sharks had to face the Oilers with one of their two top centers (Logan Couture) struggling to deal with a painful broken mouth and the other (Joe Thornton) missing onethird of the series while a knee sprain was still healing. History will also record that goalie Martin Jones kept the Sharks in games. And there will be much made of the age differential between the teams.
But the truth is, this was an offensive misfire by the Sharks, who could not capitalize enough when the openings were there to score. The Sharks did run up seven goals in one game. But they were shut out in two of the other six games. That’s no way to advance to the second round.
“Offensively, we didn’t perform to our capabilities,” Couture said when asked to mull over the entire series.
“You think of Game 3, being shut out,” Couture said. “And Game 2, giving up two short-handed goals ... Tonight, two offensive zone mistakes led to breakaways ... You give a team breakaways, they’re going to score more often than not.”
Those mistakes were so magnified, not just because they led to the Sharks’ undoing, but because they cracked open the formula that the Sharks had used so successfully to play fairly stifling defense throughout the six games. Edmonton star Connor McDavid was never really able to break out and shine. On the other hand, the matchup favored by Oilers coach Todd McLellan, who set up Edmonton center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ line as frequently as possible against Thornton’s line, was also a success. So it came down to ... luck? Not entirely.
“You need some bounces,” said Marleau. “But a lot of it is to help yourself and make those bounces.” Edmonton did. The special attention being given top stars defensively in the playoffs is why secondary stars often wind up being the ones who decide a playoff series in the end–frequently by capitalizing on momentarily lapses of detail or freaky hops of the puck. That was more or less the story in the first two minutes of Saturday’s second period, when the non-McDavids of the Oilers pounced on two opportunities and didn’t waste them, giving their team a 2-0 lead.
The game’s first goal happened when the Sharks’ Justin Braun fired a shot from up top that was blocked by Edmonton’s Oscar Klefbom, who then bumped the puck to teammate Adam Larsson, who instantly flicked it to the Oilers’ swift Leon Draisaitl, already speeding out of the zone past Braun, who seemingly was still on his shot follow-through, or at least not in position to slow down Draisaitl. All of this happened in approximately half a second.
Braun eventually caught Draisaitl from behind — but not until Draisaitl was bearing down on Martin Jones, the Sharks’ goalie. Draisaitl figured out a way to slip the puck through Jones’ legs for the first score of the game.
Less than a minute later, another “oops” led to another goal. Once more, it began in the Sharks’ offensive zone. Centerman Chris Tierney’s attempted backward pass to Paul Martin on the blue line was slightly misjudged by both men. The puck tipped off the end of Martin’s stick and into open ice, where Edmonton winger Anton Slepyshev picked it up with nothing between him and the goal. Slepyshev caught Jones leaning one way and shot the other way. Just like that, the Sharks were behind by two.
The Sharks’ secondary cast had plenty of chances, too, but could not convert. Melker Karlsson had a short-handed straight-up look at Oilers’ goalie Cam Talbot in the first period and didn’t get the goal. Jannik Hansen had an excellent opportunity early in the third period and missed a wide-open upper left corner by sending the shot wide. You could count several others.
No matter what happened Saturday night, the true turning point in this series may have occurred back in March when they lost six straight games and dropped out of first place in the Pacific Division. If they’d just played .500 hockey through that stretch, the Sharks would have been division champions and faced wild card Calgary in the first round rather than red-hot Edmonton. Anaheim, playing well in March, deservedly finished first in the division instead and swept Calgary in four games.
All of that is fodder for offseason discussion. It’s going to take place quicker than expected.