Photo courtesey of San Jose Sharks. Matt Benning gets ready before a game.
By Titus Wilkinson (@TitusWisme)
On a chilly night in San Jose the Sharks took on the Predators and struggled on home ice losing by a final of 6-2.
The goaltending matchup was between James Riemer for San Jose and Juuse Saros for Nashville.
The first period began with Nashville controlling most of the play while San Jose couldn’t get much going offensively.
Highlighting this lack of offense was their shots which was still at zero for the Sharks at the 12:00 mark of the first period.
On a power play Nashville capitalized as Nino Niederreiter tipped home his 17th goal of the season to make it 1-0.
At the end of the first the shots favored Nashville at 8-4.
Nashville got the second period started on the right foot as less than two minutes in Mikael Granlund scored to make it 2-0. The goal, which was Granlund’s eight of the season was on a floaty wrist shot that Riemer most likely wanted back
A little later in the period Nico Sturm was called for a five minute penalty though after review the officials took away the penalty entirely.
After that review just a few moments later Erik Karlsson was called for a hooking penalty putting Nashville on the power play.
While on the power play though there was a race for a loose puck in Nashville’s end which lead to Nico Sturm picking up the puck and shelving it over Saros. It was Sturm’s 12th goal of the season and made it a 2-1 game.
When the power play ended the Sharks got another chance as Erik Karlsson came out of the box and was fead a breakaway pass. The breakaway ended though with Karlsson hitting the crossbar and the score remaining the same.
Nashville not long after the goal got a odd-man rush and converted on it as Granlund scored his second goal of the game making it 3-1.
The Sharks were given a chance to get back in the game as Kevin Gravel took a penalty for interference.
Matt Benning while trying to break the puck out on the power play ended up turning it over leading to a goal for Yakov Trenin increasing Nashville’s lead to 4-1.
At the end of the second the shots still favored Nashville at 22-15.
Unlike the first two period San Jose got off to a good start scoring less than a minute in as Martin Kaut scored his first goal as a Shark.
With the score now 4-2 the team teal seemed to have new life as they controlled most of the play to start the third.
That momentum was killed though when on a odd man rush Niederreiter scored off of an accidental tip in by Noah Gregor making it 5-2.
Piling on to the lead on a power play Tommy Novak scored off a beautiful feed from Matt Duchene increasing Nashville’s lead to four.
Novak’s goal ended up being the last of the game as the Sharks finished off a dissapointing showing at home.
The three stars of the game were 1st: Mikael Granlund 2nd: Matt Duchene 3rd: Philip Tomasino
“I thought we were lifeless, I thought we were really not sharp in a lot of ways,” head coach David Quinn said after the game.
The Sharks will look to bounce back Saturday when they play at home against the Chicago Blackhawks at 7 p.m.
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