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Quick Bites: Team effort earns San Jose a win

Posted on by Erika Towne
The San Jose Sharks scored four goals and maintained control at even strength for most of the game to earn a much needed 4-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks.

The San Jose Sharks brought a little bit of everything to Saturday night’s win over the Vancouver Canucks. There was grit, skill and, most importantly, scoring. The Sharks, who, up until last night, were stymied by the Canucks 13-2 in the last two games, broke free. San Jose scored four goals, including two in the third period to win 4-3.

The scoring was back and forth for two periods. Ty Emberson scored the first goal of the game, his first career NHL goal.

Vancouver answered back on the power play and it was 1-1 after one. Fabian Zetterlund got the Sharks back into the lead in the latter half of the second period, but a late high sticking penalty by Tomas Hertl put the Sharks in the tough position of killing a penalty to close out the period. The Canucks, who sport the third best power play in the league, operating at a 30% thanks to the game against the Sharks, didn’t miss. Brock Boeser broke a five-game goalless drought and scored his 14th of the season to tie the game.

Mikael Granlund redemption arc

In the intermission, Bret Hedican called out Granlund’s play on that power play.

Hedican said he didn’t like Granlund’s coverage and he wanted to see the forward do more to protect the passing lane.

Granlund must have heard him all the down in the Sharks dressing room because he came out and decided to make up for the error. Less than 30 seconds into the third period, Granlund went coast to coast for the go-ahead goal.

“If one goes, you all go”

As mentioned before, this was a complete team game. Not only in the way that the Sharks passed the puck and stuck to the game plan but also in the way the players stuck up for one another.

For example, in the third period, when the Sharks were up 4-2 and the Canucks were trying to bring the score back to even, Elias Pettersson laid a big hit on Calen Addison.

The hit looked clean on the replay, but Matt Benning only had what he saw on the ice to go off. Benning saw Addison down and shaken and he immediately went after Pettersson, hitting him from behind. That’s when all the players converged. All five Sharks and all five Canucks were in the scrum that followed. Extra credit to 6’0″ Luke Kunin who squared off with 6’8″ Tyler Myers.

After the scrum, Drew Remenda pointed out that that’s the sign of a team coming together.

“If one goes, you all go,” said Remenda.

Sharks won the even-strength battle

Overall, the Sharks won the even-strength battle. Looking at Natural Stat Trick’s Corsi for differential at even-strength, you can see that through two periods, the Sharks swung things in the team’s favor.

The latter half of the third period, the Canucks dominated play, in part because the Sharks started sitting back with a 4-2 lead. However, the big swing came in the final four or five minutes of the game because it was around that time that Vancouver pulled its goaltender. While technically at even-strength, Vancouver had six skaters to the Sharks’ five. That helped the Canucks maintain possession in the Sharks’ zone and eventually led to Vancouver’s third goal of the game.

In fact, all three of Vancouver’s goals last night came when the team had more skaters than the Sharks. Vancouver’s first two goals were on the power play. The third happened, as mentioned, with the goaltender pulled.

Meanwhile, all but one of San Jose’s goals came at even-strength. Emberson and Fabian Zetterlund’s goals were at five-on-five, while Granlund’s was at four-on-four play. Mike Hoffman had the lone power play goal for the Sharks and it happened on the only man-advantage the Sharks had all game.

Highlights

It’s so rare that we have more than one goal to celebrate, so we’re going to highlight them all today. We’ve already seen Granlund’s but here’s a look at the other three.

I love Emberson’s first career NHL goal because he just picked a corner and then let it rip. He cleared all of those screens and then beat the goaltender top corner.

On Zetterlund’s goal, Tomas Hertl makes it all happen by protecting the puck and circling behind the net before finding Zetterlund between the dots.

And then Hoffman’s power play goal becomes the game winner.

Yes, it was a little lucky, but sometimes its better to be lucky than good and that seems to be the story of the Sharks’ season so far.

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