Sharks dominated by Blues

It took the Sharks four minutes to register their first shot on goal, and it came from the wrong side of the blue line. That’s the kind of night it was for San Jose, who fell right back into the loss column as they were decimated by the St. Louis Blues 7-2 on Saturday night.

T.J. Oshie started the scoring before the Sharks (20-14-5) registered their third shot on goal (and later recorded a hat track), and despite tallies on back-to-back shots (their sixth and seventh of the game) to take the lead, San Jose never did anything more as St. Louis (23-13-3) scored the next six goals. Antti Niemi was pulled after the sixth goal, but that didn’t stop the bleeding as Stalock let in a seventh mere minutes after.

The Sharks played a bad game of hockey in just about every phase of the game while the Blues did not play like a team that was on the second of a back-to-back. Scott Hannan was his usual awful self, San Jose had little to no cohesion in the neutral zone and even when on the powerplay could not generate anything resembling a cycle.

Some of this can be attributed to the Sharks playing without Joe Thornton for the first time in 319 regular season games, but losing to what should have been a weary Blues team 7-2 in the manner they did it was, well, abysmal.

Kevin Shattenkirk had a four point night, Alexander Steen scored, Jaden Schwartz picked up a powerplay goal and Dmitrij Jaskin smacked the final nail in the coffin for the Sharks.

The only San Jose goals came from the sticks of Melker Karlsson (his second) and Joe Pavelski (his 20th). The Sharks get back at it on Monday where they will face a Winnipeg Jets team that just finished wiping the Maple Leafs‘ bloodied carcass off the Manitoba ice. Should be fun.

[Fancy Stats] – [Blues Reaction]
[Event Summary] – [PBP Log] – [TOI Log] – [Faceoff Report]

• Tomas Hertl was mic’d up for tonight’s game. Here are a couple of excerpts.
  

  Hertl: “Something something too hard” Pavs: “What?” Hertl: “My pass too hard?” Pavs: “Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” #SJSharks

  — Jakecob Sporpstrom (@jakesundstrom) January 4, 2015

  hertl: “toe-mee. toe-mee. toe-mee.” wingels: “what?” hertl: *inaudible* wingels: “i don’t know.”

  — Jakecob Sporpstrom (@jakesundstrom) January 4, 2015

• The Blues were 1-5-1 in their last seven games.
• Steve Ott has 149 PIM against the Sharks, the most he has against any one team.
• James Sheppard was the only Shark with a positive corsi, and he started over 80 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone.
• San Jose went 0/7 on the powerplay tonight, following a 1/8 effort against the Ducks on Wednesday.

FTF Three Stars

1st Star: T.J. Oshie
2nd Star: Alexander Steen
3rd Star: Vladimir Tarasenko