Goalie Antti Niemi repaid his coach’s faith in him Wednesday
night with a solid 30-save performance that helped the Sharks end
their three-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over the Chicago
Blackhawks.
SAN JOSE
Goalie Antti Niemi repaid his coach’s faith in him Wednesday night with a solid 30-save performance that helped the Sharks end their three-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks.
No, it didn’t offset the fact that San Jose was swept out of the Western Conference finals by Chicago six months ago.
But it was a timely win that showed the Sharks could protect a two-goal lead in the third period and score with a man advantage — two things that didn’t happen during the losing streak.
The Sharks built a 2-0 lead against Niemi’s replacement on his former team, Marty Turco, on a first-period goal by Dany Heatley and another early in the second by Jamal Mayers.
And while the Blackhawks narrowed the gap less than a minute after that when a puck went in off Jake Dowell’s skate, the Sharks made it 3-1 at 4:38 with a power-play goal as Joe Pavelski intercepted a misguided clearing attempt and fired it past Turco.
Patrick Marleau added a second power-play goal at 13:37 of the final period and an empty-netter with 2.7 seconds left.
Neither the Sharks nor the Blackhawks find themselves among the NHL elite at this point of the season, and that meant nearly all of the pregame buildup focused on which of his two goalies Sharks coach Todd McLellan would throw out there against the Blackhawks.
Antero Niittymaki had put up much better numbers through the first quarter of the season, but Niemi might be expected to get an emotional bump playing against the salary-cap-strapped team that cut him loose rather than pay the $2.75 million set in an arbitration ruling.
McLellan let the suspense build until the morning skate, when it became evident Niemi was getting the start the instant he left the ice before Niittymaki.
So what led McLellan to start Niemi?
“Niittymaki had an opportunity to play against his old team, and I thought our team raised its level of play as a whole,” McLellan said, referring to his team’s 5-2 victory over Tampa Bay on Nov. 6. “They wanted to play for him, and they felt really good about going out and competing.”
McLellan also noted that a victory over the Blackhawks could provide a big confidence boost for Niemi, who entered the game with a 2-4-1 record and an .878 saves percentage — a far cry from his .951 success rate against San Jose in the playoffs.
“If Antti can come out and not so much beat his old team, but just have a real solid game against his old team, I think it can help,” McLellan said. “If it doesn’t happen that way, he’s been very resilient, and I think the upside is much greater than the downside, and that went into the decision as well.”
Niemi welcomed the challenge but played down the fact he was facing his former teammates — and the front office that turned its back on him.
“Of course I was really excited,” Niemi said of his reaction when he learned he would be the starter. “It doesn’t really matter who we’re playing against, I want to play. I felt pretty good when they told me I would play.”
The Blackhawks didn’t exactly cower at the prospect of playing their former teammate, talking about how they knew where to try and place the puck against Niemi.
Chicago coach Joel Quenneville even took a poke at his former goaltender, saying he had just asked his goalie coach, Stephane Waite, about Niemi “and he says he doesn’t have any flaws.”
Quenneville’s smile grew as he spoke, and the Chicago media began laughing with him.
“No,” the coach quickly added, “we have a lot of respect for Antti. We know what he can do.”
McLellan, too, remembered a few things from last spring, like the way defensive forward Dave Bolland limited Sharks center Joe Thornton’s effectiveness. In an apparent effort to counter that, McLellan tweaked his lines throughout the game, using Thornton with different wings to make it more difficult for Bolland to focus on the big center.
— Story by David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
