For the second consecutive game, the San Jose Sharks
inexplicably blew a two-goal lead late in the third period and lost
an overtime heartbreaker. This time it was a 5-4 loss to the Dallas
Stars on Thursday night at American Airlines Center.
DALLAS
So, what was that classic Yogi Berra line about how it’s deja vu all over again? Does Yogi know anything about hockey?
For the second consecutive game, the San Jose Sharks inexplicably blew a two-goal lead late in the third period and lost an overtime heartbreaker. This time it was a 5-4 loss to the Dallas Stars on Thursday night at American Airlines Center.
It was a carbon copy to the 4-3 overtime debacle in Colorado the previous night — right down to the Sharks having another, crucial goal disallowed in the third period for a high stick.
“Once, you think we would learn our lesson,” Sharks captain Joe Thornton said. “But twice? This is unacceptable. We’ve got to find answers why this is happening. I don’t get it. But for whatever reason, we can’t close games right now.”
If anything, this was even more painful than the Colorado game. The Sharks were holding a comfortable 4-2 lead when they allowed the Stars to roar back in the final 2:35 as James Neal and Mike Ribeiro both punched in goals from point-blank range to send the game into overtime.
In the extra session, Ribeiro struck again.
Dan Boyle and Brenden Morrow were battling for the puck behind the net. Boyle went down as the players got tangled up and the puck ended up in front of the net on the stick of Ribeiro, who drove it home past Sharks goaltender Antti Niemi for the game-winner with 2:08 left in overtime.
Forgive the Sharks if they were so angry at themselves that they were seeing double, so to speak.
“I can’t believe it’s happened twice,” forward Ryane Clowe said. “It’s even worse this time, because we were totally in charge in the third period. I don’t even know what happened at the end.”
Until the final minutes, the story of this game had been how a bunch of grumpy, ornery Sharks had responded with fire to the Colorado meltdown.
In a game where the two teams racked up 68 minutes of penalty time and saw four different Sharks go to the penalty box for fighting-related offenses, San Jose battled back from an early 2-0 deficit.
The Sharks (9-5-4) seemed to get a spark from rookie Mike Moore, who dropped the gloves with Dallas’ Mark Fistric just 20 seconds after the Stars’ second goal in the first period. After that, the Sharks found their legs.
Scott Nichol, Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture and Patrick Marleau each scored to give the Sharks a commanding, two-goal lead. And it could have been 5-2. At the 7:51 mark of the third period, Marleau raised his stick to deflect a Marc-Edouard Vlasic shot from the blue line past Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen.
But the goal was disallowed after a lengthy video review when it was ruled Marleau’s stick was above the crossbar — eerily similar to how Jamie McGinn had a goal waived off Wednesday night.
That should have been an omen of the bad things that were to come.
Here’s another not-so-good sign for the Sharks: The Stars (10-7-0) basically pushed them around in front of the net. With big bodies Douglas Murray and Niclas Wallin out of the lineup again with injuries, the Sharks could not prevent Dallas forwards from poking pucks past a beleaguered Niemi.
“It seemed like every goal came around the crease,” Clowe said. “We’ve got to get stronger there. Neal, (Brad) Richards and Morrow get around the net and do most of their work in tight. We talked about it, but we still couldn’t do anything about it.”
Added Niemi: “There were a lot of bad bounces out there. But we just didn’t play the full 60 minutes.”
Again.
Now, the Sharks have to pick up the pieces after a bizarre road trip that saw them squander two sure victories and the vital two points that would have come with them. Before the game, Sharks coach Todd McLellan had called the Colorado loss one of those games that “always come back to hurt you at some point, usually in April when everything is winding down.”
Make that two games now.
“You don’t want to envision this happening one night in a row, let alone two nights in a row,” said McLellan, in a quote that might make Yogi proud.
— Story by Mark Emmons, San Jose Mercury News
