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SAN JOSE — The Sharks showed poise and more than a little bit of resiliency in bringing back to SAP Center a 2-0 lead in their opening round NHL playoff series against the Anaheim Ducks.
Game 3 showed one thing above everything else, though: That the Sharks are simply too much right now for their Southern California rivals.
The Sharks blew open a tie game with four goals in the second period and went on to set a handful of team playoff records to push the Ducks to the brink of elimination with an 8-1 win.
Eight different players scored a goal and goalie Martin Jones set a new career playoff-high with 45 saves as the Sharks put themselves in a position to earn a first round sweep with another win over the Ducks in Game 4 on Wednesday night.
The Sharks’ eight goals set a new team playoff record, and their four power play goals tied a team postseason mark. Every Sharks forward had at least one point.
“It’s easy to let your foot off the gas coming home, thinking it’s going to be an easy game,” Sharks center Eric Fehr said. “I thought our guys did a really good job of making sure we brought our best effort.”
The only potential drawback, though, was the absence of Brent Burns for the final 10 minutes of the third period. There was no immediate explanation for why he sat out, with coach Pete DeBoer saying that there was no reason to re-insert Burns into the game with the outcome no longer in doubt.
After all, it was over after the second period.
Joonas Donskoi and Marcus Sorensen scored goals 2:26 apart in the second period to give the Sharks a 3-1 lead. Fehr added his first goal of the postseason with 6:17 to go in the second on a nifty individual effort, and Tomas Hertl capped the dizzying 20 minutes with a power play goal with 3:11 to go.
The turning point was Donskoi’s goal that gave the Sharks a 2-1 lead just 1:15 into the second period.
After Ducks defenseman Brandon Montour blew a tire and lost the puck coming out of his own zone, Donskoi retrieved it and moved in on a 2 on 1 with Evander Kane. Kane took a pass and fed it back to a streaking Donskoi, who tapped it past Ducks goalie John Gibson.
Anaheim unraveled after that. The Ducks were shorthanded eight times, taking 20 minutes of penalties — with a 10-minute misconduct going to Ryan Getzlaf — in the third period alone.
“It just seemed like from that point forward we were playing as individuals,” Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said of the Donskoi goal. “Guys were trying to do the jobs by themselves, that’s what it appeared to me.”
To help generate offense after just one even strength goal in two games, the Ducks were more aggressive in terms of pinching in at the blue line and activating their defense. They were also effective for the second half of the first period, and even at times in the second period, at establishing a forecheck.
The Sharks made them pay with a handful of odd-man rushes.
“On the blue lines, their D were pinching down most of the game,” said Sharks center Logan Couture, who had a goal and two assists. “I think they wanted to keep some o-zone pressure. Wingers did a good job of beating that guy and scoring a few. We didn’t miss on many of them.”
The Sharks had received better goaltending in this series, but another reason why they came home with a 2-0 series lead was the play of their top six forwards.
Pavelski had three assists in the first two games in Anaheim, two coming on goals from Kane. Couture and Hertl each had a goal an assist.
The Ducks, meanwhile, were still waiting for their leading scorers to make an impact.
Rickard Rakell, who had 34 goals and 69 points in the regular season, had been held to just two shots on goal in two games. Top assist man Ryan Getzlaf had one assist, in Game 2, but it came on Hampus Lindholm’s power play goal. Corey Perry, Ondrej Kase and Adam Henrique were all held scoreless.
Now the Sharks had last change and the chance to put shutdown defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Justin Braun on the ice against Anaheim’s top line after every stoppage in play.
Rakell scored a power play goal at the 13:40 mark of the first period for his first point of the series. Only once this season had Rakell been held without a point in three consecutive Ducks games, which happened back in October.
The line of Couture, Hertl and Mikkel Boedker saw quite a bit of time against the Ducks’ top line.
“They had their chances tonight. A lot of opportunities they had, (Jones) played excellent,” Couture said. “Defensively against them we weren’t as good as we have been like the first two. We gave them too many opportunities in our slot. (Jones) played really well.”
No one in teal was thinking about what Anaheim accomplished in 2017 when it lost the first two games of its second round series against the Edmonton Oilers only to bounce back to win the next two games in the Alberta capital.
Still, Anaheim felt much better about the way it played in Game 2 on Saturday and were plenty capable of shifting momentum with one win. The Ducks only lost three straight games in regulation time once this season, from March 8-12, which was followed by a 10-1-1 streak.
That seems like ancient history now, as does the way the Sharks finished the regular season with a 1-4-1 record.
“They brought some energy, and in the second, we seemed to capitalize on every opportunity,” Couture said. “They had chances. Joner made a lot of big saves. We capitalized on a lot of 2 on 1s and it kind of got out of hand down the stretch.”
Jones had stopped 53 of the 55 shots he faced through two games for a .964 save percentage. Only one other time with the Sharks had Jones been this solid to start a series — in 2016 when he registered shutouts in games 2 and 3 against St. Louis, after allowing two goals in the series opener, in the Western Conference Final.