Sharks goalie Martin Jones looks to be on top of his game.
He looks composed, technically sound in his recent outings
San Jose Sharks goalie Martin Jones rarely looks rattled or flustered. He’s playing his angles and staying square to shooters, but also being aggressive in certain situations. He’s making needed saves at critical times.
In short, Jones is looking like he did right after he first came to San Jose in 2015 when the Sharks generally knew what they were going to get on a nightly basis from their No. 1 goalie.
It looks like it’s OK to believe in Martin Jones again.
“For me, it’s his fight,” Sharks coach Bob Boughner said Monday, pointing to how composed and technically sound Jones looked in the waning moments of his team’s 3-2 win over Los Angeles two days earlier. “That’s what it comes down to for me.”
The Sharks (17-16-4) have climbed back into the playoff picture over the last three-plus weeks, and Jones has done most of the heavy lifting, playing his best hockey in at least three years.
Going into today’s game with
the Anaheim Ducks at SAP Center, Jones is 7-1-1 with a .942 save percentage in his last nine games. Since March 12, the Sharks have moved from nine points out of a playoff spot to three prior to Monday’s games.
Jones was named the NHL’s Second Star of the Week on Monday after he went 4-0-0 last week with a 1.71 goals-against average and a .942 save percentage.
“He’s on a roll,” Sharks captain Logan Couture said Saturday. “Whatever he’s seeing, he’s stopping right now.”
Boughner had a simple and message for Jones and Devan Dubnyk when he met with both of his goaltenders roughly five weeks ago: They needed to improve.
By the end of February, Jones had a .877 save percentage and had been pulled three times in 12 games. Dubnyk wasn’t much better with a .892 save percentage and a 1-4-1 record in nine appearances. As a tandem, their combined numbers ranked near the bottom of the NHL.
Boughner wanted to get to a point where he knew who he was going to start in any given game, “and that wasn’t happening. And now it is.”
Jones is now 14-7-2 with a .905 save percentage, also benefiting from the Sharks’ improved defensive structure that has cut down on the number of high danger chances against, especially recently.
“That was during a time of the season where we weren’t playing our best brand of hockey and sometimes you need your goalie to bail you out in those situations,” Jones said when asked about Boughner’s meeting.
“(Dubnyk) and I, we played well at times but there were times during that stretch where we weren’t giving our game the best chance to win.”
Boughner pointed not only to Jones’ improved level of competing but also how personal pride has perhaps played a factor.
Sure, Jones has faced his share of criticism from fans and media, with perhaps there still being some speculation that the remaining three years of his contract might get bought out by the Sharks at the end of the season. Jones has three years remaining on the six-year, $34.5 million deal he signed in July 2017, with each year carrying a salary cap hit of $5.75 million.
But Jones also hasn’t played up to his own standards that he set for himself when he was an NHL AllStar in 2017 and helped the Sharks make the playoff four years running from 2016 and 2019, playing 60 games and winning six series in the process.
“I can’t speak for (Jones),” Couture said. “But when you’re going through struggles individually as a person, it gets to you. It’s not the outside world,
it’s not the media. It’s the expectations that you have for yourself, and you get disappointed in yourself.
“I can speak from a personal standpoint that I’ve been there throughout my career. Definitely disappointed in the way that things were going, and the only way to get out of it is to work. (Jones), every day he shows up and works extremely hard, practices hard. He’s done a lot of extra work in the summer. He’s getting rewarded right now.”
Boughner said that Jones, “may not be a guy that slams his stick or slams the door or says anything negative in the media when he gets pulled or anything like that. But I think he’s a guy with a lot of pride, and I know his teammates love him and his teammates want the best for him.”
From the start of the 2015-16 season to the end of the abbreviated 2019-2020 season, no NHL goalies was busier than Jones, who played 293 regular-season games in that time.
He’s had a long enough offseason to where fatigue probably isn’t going to be as big an issue over the final month of the season when he, assuming he keeps it up, will be the Sharks workhorse in their push for a playoff spot.
Boughner said he doesn’t want to burn out Jones but added, “we’re in a situation here where we’re fighting for our lives every day.”
“But if Jones keeps playing as well as he is and we keep rolling, then he’s going to see a bulk of the games, and that’s what you want out of your number one,” he said. “You don’t want to bat an eye. Jonesy’s in and he’s going and there’s no debate.”
“I’ve been working hard for a while, trying to get back to playing a little bit better hockey,” Jones said. “It’s just working right now, so I’m going to try and ride this out.” VLASIC TO MISS GAME AGAINST DUCKS >> Defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic will miss tonight’s game with the Anaheim Ducks with an upper-body injury and will likely be unavailable for the rest of the week, Boughner said.
Vlasic was hurt in the first period of Saturday’s game with the Los Angeles Kings, with Boughner saying an awkward fall aggravated a prior injury. Vlasic did not play the final two periods of what became a 3-2 Sharks win, their fourth straight. Boughner said it was not a head injury.
Vlasic, 34, has appeared in all 37 Sharks games this season.
In Vlasic’s place, Boughner said he will either dress Fredrik Claesson or Christian Jaros, both former Ottawa Senators. Claesson played four games for the Sharks in February when both Erik Karlsson and Simek were injured, but Boughner said he is leaning toward dressing Jaros, a right-shot defenseman who could pair more easily with the leftshot Radim Simek.