Sharks' Tomas Hertl to miss Game 4 of Stanley Cup Final
The San Jose Sharks will be without forward Tomas Hertl for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final with a lower body injury.
It will be the second-straight game Hertl will miss with the issue. Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said Hertl is still considered ‘day-to-day.’
The Sharks won Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3-2 in overtime with Melker Karlsson taking Hertl’s spot on the Sharks’ top line with Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski.
Also, DeBoer moved center Logan Couture up to the top line at points to give them extra scoring punch at crucial moments of Game 3. The Sharks are down 2-1 in their best-of-seven series with the Penguins.
“It helped us the other night, sure. It would be similar to them moving Crosby, Malkin and Kessel together. You have three great players playing together. But in order to do that, that hurts you in other parts of the lineup. You have to be comfortable you can survive doing that with the other parts,” DeBoer said. “We got away with it the other night. We shortened the bench. We had some guys, I thought, give us some real supreme efforts underneath that group. But I don't know if that's something that we can go to all the time.”
Hertl has been one of the Sharks’ best forwards on this playoff run. He has a strong scoring touch in front of the net and has a 5-on-5 score adjusted Corsi of plus-7.6 percent. In Games 1 and 2, his 5-on-5 score adjusted Corsi was plus-19.1 according to War on Ice.
Hertl has six goals and 11 points in 20 playoff games. He scored 21 goals in 2015-16.
In San Jose’s Game 3 win they had more shot attempts than Pittsburgh for the first time in the series at 79-76.
Another one of Hertl’s biggest strengths is being able to keep the puck pinned in deep with a strong forecheck. Karlsson helped with this in Game 3 as well.
"As far as lines go, Melker, like the rest of our group, was great. He was tenacious, on the puck. He was in on the forecheck, caused the turnover on the overtime goal,” DeBoer said. “We've got a lot of guys, we talk about interchangeable parts, but we have a lot of guys that play on our third line, play on our fourth line, that can jump up or have played higher in the lineup in the past.”
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
