By the numbers: Game 59 vs. Nashville

Scoring Chances

San Jose

Even Strength Scoring Chance Save Percentage: 78.6%

Percent of Fenwick Events that were Scoring Chances: 27.1%

Nashville

Even Strength Scoring Chance Save Percentage: 92.3%

Percent of Fenwick Events that were Scoring Chances: 36.8%

Period-by-Period Summary

-Much like the Tampa game, this game wasn't as lopsided as the score indicates, as scoring chances at evens were 14-13 in favor of Nashville

-What certainly helped the Sharks in this game was the powerplay. They didn't score a goal with it, but the Sharks generated seven scoring chances on the powerplay, thanks in large part to a flurry of four scoring chances in four seconds during a net-mouth scramble in the second period (the Sharks would go on to generate two more scoring chances during that powerplay).

-Although the fourth line had its first decent game in a while in the offensive zone, it came at the cost of good defense, as the fourth line was on the ice for six scoring chances against at evens. It's hard to say what the reason for that line's struggles was, but I think it's maybe about time Shep had a turn watching from the pressbox, as he's running a (small sample size warning) -8 scoring chance differential over his last three games.

-For the second straight game, I'd say the Sharks' second line was their strongest, as Marleau in particular looked very good, finishing his night with a +3 scoring chance differential.

-The Sharks were able to avoid getting hammered too much by Ribiero's line, but Forsberg and his linemates were able to produce quite a bit, as Forsberg was on the ice for six NSH scoring chances at evens.

-The five scoring chances against he was on the ice for doesn't look pretty, but Seth Jones put up a very respectable +5 scoring chance differential in this game, being on the ice for over 70% of Nashville's even strength scoring chances.

-For some reason, the Sharks had a hard time handling Nashville's fourth line (which is especially embarrassing when you see that line started zero shifts in the offensive zone).

-I have no knowledge of how sustainable such a statistic is, but it is worth noting that 37% of the Preds' even strength Fenwick events were scoring chances, while only 27% of San Jose's were.

Zone Entries

San Jose

Nashville

-We mentioned last night in our recap that the Sharks' neutral zone attack was way better than usual last night, and the numbers here bear that out. While Nashville carried the puck in on a surprisingly-high 49% of their entries, San Jose did so on 67% of their entries.

-The biggest contributor's to San Jose's neutral zone efforts were Dillon, Couture, Vlasic, Nieto, and Tierney, who had another good game in the neutral zone.

-Karlsson wasn't able to have much success last night, getting denied on two out of his three entry attempts

-Ribiero, Fisher, and Forsberg put up pretty good numbers for Nashville, while Smith put up a ridiculously high number of shot attempts/entry for some indiscernible reason.

-The #Perds weren't able to generate much offense off of Seth Jones' carry-ins, but his neutral zone performance was pretty impressive, as he carried the puck in two times on three entries.

Entry Targeting

San Jose

Nashville

-Braun didn't have a fantastic first game back from injury, but he did do a good job stifling Nashville's entry attempts, as he only allowed carry-ins on three of the seven entries Nashville attempted against him, and he denied another two of them.

-Burns also had another one of his rare good games defending against entries, as Nashville only managed three carry-ins against him on ten entry attempts.

-One of the best parts of this type of analysis is that you can see what players in particular contributed most to their team's numbers. Through this analysis, we can see that the defensemen most responsible for Nashville's bad numbers in this game was... anybody not named Anthony Bitetto.

-Seriously though, Bitetto was the only Nashville defenseman in this game who had a carry-in against percentage that was 50 or lower.

-During the game, I was thinking it was weird how many carry-ins Weber was allowing, but it's funny looking back at the numbers now and seeing that he wasn't even the worst NSH defenseman in that regard, as Mattias Ekholm allowed nine carry-ins against on twelve SJ entry attempts.

Zone Exits

San Jose

Nashville

-Burns had a very ineffective game last night on zone exits, as his only successful breakout occurred when there was only three minutes left in the game.

-Overall the Sharks had a pretty weak game on zone exits, turning the puck over on about 33% of their touches

-A big reason for SJ's ugly numbers here is the work of Barclay Goodrow and Justin Braun. Goodrow's generally been very hit-or-miss on entries this season, and last night was definitely one of his "miss" games, as he turned the puck over three times, and iced it once on four touches.

-The highlights for the Sharks here were Chris Tierney, Joe Pavelski, and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who had one of his most effective zone exit games that I can remember.

-Nashville had quite a few forwards impress on zone exits last night, with Forsberg, Neal, and Nystrom really leading the way for them.

-Nashville's D didn't have nearly as much success exiting the zone as their forwards did, though Ekholm and Josi did somewhat counter their bad efforts on entry targeting with pretty good efforts breaking the puck out of Nashville's defensive zone.