San Jose Sharks clicks at the right moment to win Game 7 against Detroit Red Wings to move ahead
The series between San Jose Sharks and Detroit Red Wings was pretty much even. There were several times when one team looked better than the other while on other occasions it was the other team that looked the stronger.
However, Red Wings’ coach, Mike Babcock, said that ultimately the better team would emerge as winners.
In the end, indeed it was San Jose Sharks that proved to be the dominating force in the game, winning and clinching the second spot that was vacant in the Western Finals.
Detroit Red Wings was the big strugglers in the game as it failed to capitalise from the four power-plays coming its way.
Wings ended the series with four power-play goals while Sharks was brilliant during the night and scored once out of the three power-plays coming its way. It ended on a high five power-play goals that saw them winning the series 4-3 in the end.
"Didn't get 'er done for us in the end", Babcock said after Thursday night's 3-2 loss. "They scored one more power-play goal in the series than we did – and tonight it was enough to win the game for them. "So when you look at it, they won the specialty teams
battle tonight. We had some opportunities but not good enough, and we had an opportunity down the stretch when the game was on the line and didn't' get it done".
Red Wings had shown that it was brilliant at killing penalty minutes since it hadn’t allowed Sharks to score any goals on the last 10 occasions.
However, in the final game of the series it was unable to keep up the form and struggling in maintaining the same form.
The first goal of the period was also a result of mistake by the defence who handed the puck to Setoguchi. He carried the puck all the way and then got it past Red Wings’ goalkeeper to get into the lead.
Red Wings had several scoring chances but it was unable to do what Sharks did and constantly failed to near Sharks’ goal.
Whatever little attacks it made were easily dealt by Sharks’ goalkeeper, Antti Niemi.
With five minutes left in the game, Red Wings came across its fourth power-play, trailing by 3-2.
Unfortunately, it came up with nothing and lost the game in the end to send Sharks into the Western Conference playoffs.
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