Half way through the first period, San Jose drew high sticking penalty. While on the power play, With seconds winding down, Tomas Hertl made a power forward move on the defender in the right circle and got a shot on goal near the right post. Goalie made the save but Hertl tapped in his own rebound and put the Sharks up on a 1-0 lead. With less than 5 minutes left in the period, Logan Couture took a shot from close in behind the goal line by the right post. The puck bounced off of the goalie and popped in front of the crease where Alexander Barabanov shot it bar-down.
Everything was looking great for the Sharks. Almost half way through the 2nd period, Sharks were leading 2-0 and outshooting 27-7. Then on a 3 on 2 rush by Washington, Craig Smith scored with a wrist shot from the right circle to the farside. Another 3 minutes later, Nicolas Aube-Kubel scored with a wrister through the 5-hole from the right circle and tied the game at 2. Another 4 minutes later a shot by Matt Irwin got deflected off of a skate or Sharks’ stick into the net. Before the period, another shot popped up off the shoulder of Kaapo Kahkonen and bounced off the hand of Craig Smith giving him his 2nd goal of the night and put Washington on a 4-2 lead. Deja Vu for the Sharks because that was exactly the score after 2nd in the last game where the Sharks gave up 4 goals in the 2nd period.
Things got from bad to worse in the third period. San Jose gave up 4 more goals from T.J. Oshi, Ovechkin and Strome. for a final score of 8-3 Capitals.
Tonight the Sharks led in Shots (41-30) and Blocked Shots (22-20) while the Capitals led in Faceoffs (61%-39%), Hits (28-23),Takeaways (14-10) and Giveaways (6-12).
Three stars of the game:
1: Alex Ovechkin (2G, 1A)
2: Nicolas Aube-Kubel (1G, 1A)
3: Matt Irwin (1G, +3)
#WSHvsSJS #AllCaps #LetsGoSharks #SJSharks #SanJoseSharks #SharksForLife #SharksTerritory #SanJose #NHL #SharksFanNetwork #INDTVUSA #TomasHertl #LoganCouture #AlexanderBarabanov
