On their 50th shot of the night, the San Jose Sharks made
certain that the flight home from their longest trip of the season
wasn’t going to seem any longer than the 41/2 hours they would be
in the air. That final shot Tuesday night capped an overtime
breakaway by Patrick Marleau, and when the puck slid through goalie
Pekka Rinne’s five hole, the Sharks had earned a 2-1 victory over
the Nashville Predators.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
On their 50th shot of the night, the San Jose Sharks made certain that the flight home from their longest trip of the season wasn’t going to seem any longer than the 41/2 hours they would be in the air.
That final shot Tuesday night capped an overtime breakaway by Patrick Marleau, and when the puck slid through goalie Pekka Rinne’s five hole, the Sharks had earned a 2-1 victory over the Nashville Predators.
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It marked the fifth time on this seven-game trip that San Jose exited the visitor’s locker room with two points, and Marleau didn’t hesitate when asked how important it was to be returning home with a victory, especially after losing the two previous games.
“It’s a dogfight,” he said of the Western Conference playoff race. “You’ve seen what happens when we lost a couple games there and slid back down.”
The Sharks started the night tied for seventh place in the West. They finished it deadlocked with three other teams for fourth. And the expectation is things will stay this tight all the way until the April 9 end of the season.
Sharks goalie Antti Niemi earned the victory, making 30 saves while giving up only a first-period, power-play goal to defenseman Cody Franson. Right wing Devin Setoguchi got the equalizer midway through the second period on the sixth of his team-high nine shots with both San Jose goals being set up by defenseman Kent Huskins.
“Seto played one of his better games in a long time,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said. “Give him the goal — that was a hell of a shot — but there was everything else he did. He was on his toes, dangerous every time he was on the ice. He used his speed to his advantage. He stayed in plays, didn’t fly by them.”
The Sharks survived a poor start as the first 10 minutes of this game almost mirrored the last 10 minutes of their loss to Florida, with San Jose hemmed deep in its own zone for more than a minute at a time.
Special teams were part of the problem early.
On the power play, McLellan created a new first unit of Logan Couture, Ryane Clowe and Joe Thornton, but the Sharks failed to score on two Nashville penalties that overlapped to create 26 seconds of a two-man advantage.
The Predators, however, capitalized on the one chance they had when Franson’s shot from the right faceoff circle beat Niemi through the five hole at 6:48.
Shortly after that, the Sharks slowly but surely took control of the game.
“I looked up at one point and the shots were 8-1 against us,” McLellan said. “They were much faster, quicker than we were, but we found a way to work back in.”
Setoguchi’s goal came on a 23-foot wrist shot from the bottom of the right faceoff circle that beat Rinne high on the short side.
“I was going wide with speed,” said Setoguchi, whose goal was his 12th of the season. “The only way to beat this guy is to put it through him hard like Patty did or put it up by his ears.”
With the score tied, Niemi came up with several big saves, poke-checking the puck to stop a Steve Sullivan breakaway late in the second period and blocking a nifty deflection by former Shark Marcel Goc midway through the third.
All of which set the stage for Marleau’s 22nd goal of the season—a one-on-one showdown that came 67 seconds before the game would have been decided by a shootout.
“I had just jumped over the ice and it was kind of a turnover and Husky had the puck, had his head up and put it right on my tape,” Marleau said. “Rinne’s a big boy, he covers a lot of net, so I thought I’d try something different and try to go five hole.”
The Sharks now have 68 points — the same as Nashville, the Anaheim Ducks and the Dallas Stars.
“That point’s big — a big, big point,” McLellan said of the one earned in overtime. “A big one for us and probably a big loss for them.”
The Sharks face the Washington Capitals and the Colorado Avalanche at HP Pavilion before hitting the road again next week.
—Goalie Antero Niittymaki, who reinjured himself in warm-ups before the Sharks’ 2-0 victory over Washington on Feb. 8 and returned to San Jose three days later, has continued to stay off the ice to give his lower-body ailment time to heal.
“He’s getting treatments back in San Jose and when we get back as a team, we’ll have a better indication where he’s at,” McLellan said.
— Story by David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
