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Sharks work hard to beat Blue Jackets
By Jeremy Harness March 6, 2010 |
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SAN JOSE - You hear this all the time. You may be doing everything right but may not be seeing the fruits of your labor, but if you stay persistent and keep working, that fruit will eventually fall off the tree. The Sharks were in that kind of situation on Saturday, their hard work and overall solid play not being rewarded with goals for the first 47 minutes of their game at HP Pavilion against the Columbus Blue Jackets. However, two goals in the final period gave the Sharks a well-deserved 2-1 win. “I think we’re going to be in that position (often from this point on),” defenseman Rob Blake said. “(We have to) stay patient, stay with it. The goalie played well, but we found a way to get to him. “You’re going to be in tight games, and that’s the way it’s going to be. You need to play in those.” For two periods, the Sharks had no problems getting shots on net - they had 29 of them in that span, doubling up the Blue Jackets in that category - but the real problem was getting one past Columbus goalie Steve Mason, who stopped the Sharks at every corner. They did everything else in order to win Saturday night’s game. They were more physical than the Blue Jackets, which certainly helped them kill off a four-minute penalty in the first period with relative ease. They also moved the puck well and, thus, had point-blank shots at the goal. Of course, none of that matters when you can’t actually put one into the net. Columbus got on the board at 1:00 of the second period, when Andrew Murray got one past Nabokov, sticking in his own rebound. An entire period passed after that point, and there was a strong feeling that this just wasn’t the Sharks’ night. However, all of that changed at 7:53 when Dany Heatley, camped out in his familiar place directly in front of the net, took a pass from sidekick Joe Thornton and threw it over Mason’s shoulder to tie the game at 1-1. Maybe you can call it poetic justice. By this time, the Sharks had maintained its substantial shots-on-goal advantage over Columbus, 38 to 16. San Jose came within inches of taking the lead late in the period when Thornton’s close-range shot reached the plane of the goal line. The light signaling a goal initially went off, but the score was struck down after officials reviewed the play. The Sharks didn’t back off of their relentless attack, and that approach paid off as they crashed the net again at the 15:20 mark. That’s when Joe Pavelski was able to ram the puck by Mason to give the Sharks that lead they thought they had just minutes earlier. “There was a lot of traffic (in front of the net),” Pavelski said. “That’s how we’ve scored our goals.” |
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