Penguins defeat Sharks in OT, take 2-0 Stanley Cup Final lead
PITTSBURGH – In hindsight, we should have totally anticipated overtime between the Pittsburgh Penguins and San Jose Sharks, as Wednesday night’s affair was the fifth Stanley Cup Final Game 2 in the last six years to require extra time.
What we might not have expected was a rookie ending it.
Conor Sheary scored his second goal of the Final, propelling the Penguins to a 2-1 overtime victory. They remained too fast and too tenacious defensively for the San Jose Sharks; and now, they’re two wins away from hoisting hockey’s Holy Grail.
The series shifts to San Jose for Games 3 and 4.
Sheary’s goal, at 2:35 of overtime, was a slick shot through traffic that Martin Jones (28 saves) couldn’t track. It was his fourth of the playoffs.
As expected, the teams played a brisk but strategic second game of their series
The first period was fast-paced and showed a Sharks team that was much more engaged than they were in the opening frame of Game 1, when they were skated out of the building. Shot attempts ended up 22-17 in favor of the Penguins, who also had the period’s lone power-play.
But the second period saw the Penguins continue to frustrate the Sharks with their defense. San Jose had 12 shot attempts; the Penguins had 20, including a couple on the period’s lone scoring sequence.
The Penguins took a 1-0 lead in the second period on a nightmarish shift for the Sharks’ third defensive pairing of Roman Polak and Brendan Dillon.
Polak had the puck near the slot, and attempted to slide it over to his defensive partner. Instead, he flubbed it, forcing Dillon to track it down and giving the Penguins’ Carl Hagelin time to close in on him. Dillon tried to skate the puck out of danger; instead, Hagelin picked his pocket and sent a pass cross-ice to linemate Nick Bonino, the hero of Game 1.
Bonino got a shot off that trickled through Jones and off the stick of a sliding Polak. It would have gone into the gaping net anyway, but Kessel knocked it home for emphasis, scoring the 10th goal of his dynamic playoff season.
The Penguins killed a Sharks’ power play that ended the second and entered the third.
The third period saw a significant push from the Sharks, swarming the Penguins’ end with more regularity. Murray had the benefit of a couple of pucks off the posts to his sides, including a chance by Tomas Hertl off the crossbar and Chris Tierney that went off his glove and the far post. Jones was aggressive and good, too, following a strong Game 1 with an even better Game 2 – although his post bailed him out too, particularly on a Kessel chance in the third.
So, naturally, the tying goal had to go off the goalpost, too.
Jones held the Sharks in the game, and Justin Braun finally repaid that effort with 4:05 left in regulation.
Logan Couture started the play by winning a puck battle against Bonino, and sent the puck to the point. Braun fired it through as a mass of traffic moved in front of Murray, including the big body of Joel Ward. The puck went off the near post and behind Murray.
It was his first of the playoffs. It was two days after his lost his father-in-law, former NHL player Tom Lysiak, to leukemia. Braun is scheduled to take a leave from the team before Game 3 to pay his respects.
(Credit goes to coach Peter DeBoer here, by the way, for adding Ward to the Couture line in the third period, dropping Patrick Marleau down to the third line. His addition turned around that line’s fortunes.)
The teams skated to a regulation tie, and then it was onto overtime.
The team that wins Game 2 has won the Stanley Cup in nine of the last 13 seasons, and 73.7 percent overall since 1939.
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
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