Scoring Chances: Game 23 vs. New Jersey

Complete scoring chance summary

On-ice scoring chances for and against

Team scoring chance totals

Head-to-head scoring chances

• New Jersey is a notoriously low-event team so it isn’t particularly surprising that the Sharks and Devils combined for just 20 scoring chances last night. To put that into perspective, the Sharks and Lightning combined for 20 chances in the first period alone on Thursday.
• It didn’t end up mattering as far as the final score was concerned but, as Todd McLellan discussed following the game, the power play had an uncharacteristically impotent night. San Jose’s usually lethal first unit was on the ice for zero scoring chances, which is a rarity.
• Speaking of the power play, it looks like Jason Demers has been taken off the second unit in favor of Marc-Edouard Vlasic which doesn’t really make sense to me on any level. You want to save Vlasic for the parts of the game he’s good at (i.e., everything other than the power play) while Demers is a reliable quarterback, even if the results haven’t been there so far this season. It’s a curious move, probably fueled by frustration with that unit’s ineffectiveness more than anything else, and it will be interesting to monitor going forward.
• Probably had a lot to do with them going up a pretty terrible Devils fourth line, featuring the likes of Cam Janssen, but Sheppard/McCarthy/Brown weren’t anywhere near the disaster they could have been. The Sharks have been searching for a useful fourth line for much of the season and while I’m not sold on McCarthy and Brown being the right ingredients, their results from this game are very much in line with what the team is looking for.
• Brent Burns returned to the lineup against Tampa but he was back for real last night. He started just two shifts in the offensive zone against the Devils but the Sharks controlled 70.6% of the shot attempts and 62.5% of the scoring chances when he was on the ice. Also he threw at least three butt-checks by my count.