By Pearl Allison Lo

photo credit: otttawacitizen.com of Anaheim goaltender John Gibson

ANAHEIM– The Anaheim Ducks’ John Gibson got his second shutout in three games, as the Ducks beat San Jose Friday on the Sharks’ one-game road trip.

It was another tight rivalry contest played between the teams, where defensed dominated. All three games so far have been shutouts.

San Jose Coach Peter DeBoer said, “Both goalies were great, special teams were even. It just came down to who’s probably going to get that first goal is probably going to win. We had our opportunities early in the game, I thought they were a little better in the third…”

The Sharks only had one shot for the most of the third period. Their second and last shot came with less than a minute left.

San Jose Captain Joe Pavelski said, “It seemed that we weren’t clean enough. When we had our chance to break out it was either a puck hopped or we missed the play. They had good pressure.”

Sharks’ center Joe Thornton added, “…we didn’t sustain too much in their end…we were just kind of hesitant a little bit, and we shouldn’t be. We have good players, we make good plays and we didn’t execute as good as we did the first two periods.”

San Jose had four opportunities, but were unable to continue their power-play goal streak. The loss also ended Joel Ward’s five-game point streak and Patrick Marleau’s four-game goal streak.

The Sharks got their first penalty kill at 3:02 of the first period. Sami Vatanen had a shot which Melker Karlsson went down to block. Vatanen’s shot nearly went into the net, as it hit post.

San Jose’s second penalty of the night came when Micheal Haley, who was just recalled from the San Jose Barracuda before the game, got into a fight with Chris Stewart at 9:40.

Both teams each had another penalty and then one more penalty came at the 20-minute mark, which gave the Sharks a man advantage going into the second period.

Both San Jose’s Brent Burns and Anaheim’s Rickard Rakell had three shots apiece. The Ducks outhit the Sharks 17-8, Kevin Bieska with four of them.

San Jose got a penalty kill in the second when Nick Ritchie was called for too many men on the ice.

Right after the horn blew to end the second period, a number of players got into a scuffle.

Anaheim blocked eight shots. The Sharks returned the favor in hits, 11-6.

Mike Santorelli finally broke the deadlock when he got the puck under goalie Martin Jones’s left arm. Santorelli was fed by Nate Thompson at 2:49. Stewart had the second assist. It was Thompson’s first point of the year in two games.

On his goal, Santorelli said “The three of us got in on the forecheck. Stewart and Thompson were down low and Thompson made a good pass up to me.”

San Jose’s chances to get back in the game got slimmer when Joe Pavelski was called for tripping at 16:37.

Ducks’ center Shawn Horcoff said on winning games in this fashion, “…Playoff games are like that. You have to learn how to close these games out. We did it by being aggressive.”

Game notes: Jones has now stopped 68 of 70 shots against Anaheim this year. Burns had a game-tying four shots and a game-high four blocked shots and 27:14 of ice time. The Sharks’ Justin Braun had a game-high seven hits. Anaheim’s Corey Perry, Vatanen and Rakell had four shots apiece. Frederik Andersen was still missing in action, as backup Gibson made his sixth straight start. Gibson was the third goalie San Jose has faced in the teams’ three games so far this year. After Mirco Mueller was reassigned Thursday, Dylan DeMelo became the seventh defenseman who flew with the team to Anaheim. The Sharks play the second of back-to-back games, against the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday at 7:30pm.