San Jose Sharks devour the Detroit Red Wings in a thrilling 4-3 Matchup
It was one of the most anticipated matches of the month, when rivals of the West coast San Jose and Detroit go at it in their second matchup of the season. Either teams definitely didn’t disappoint the over 20,000 fans who came to watch at the Joe Louis
Arena in Detroit, Michigan, as everyone was buckled down to their seats till the very last second.
Detroit came into the match with a five-game winning streak but their loss boosted up the Sharks streak to four in a row. Both goalies Antti Niemi and Jimmy Howard performed remarkably well, blocking over 35 attempts at the net.
The Joe Thornton and Devin Setoguchi partnership worked like a charm in favour of San Jose, as the latter picked up two of the most important goals while Thornton who scored his 300th goal of his career and assisted the match winning one.
"Our play-offs started 15 games ago," a wild Thornton said.
Thornton aka Jumbo captured the first period of the game for the Sharks with less than fifty seconds left when they received the added man advantage against Jiri Hudler being sent to the benches for holding.
"He's very good with the puck and he uses his size to his advantage," Detroit’s All-Star defenseman http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/players/profile?playerId=539 said. "He's hard to defend with or without the puck."
The second forty minutes seemed to hold out outstandingly well for them, replying every shot that went in, with one of their own. Daniel Cleary put up double goals in the second period alone, but was unable to keep the momentum going when Ryane Clowe answered
him after his first and Devin Setoguchi throwing another through Howard in the final seconds to again take the lead 3-2 for the Sharks.
Devin Setoguchi insured the game for his team when making 17th goal of the season with less than seven minutes reaming, doubling the lead to 4-2. Detroit made over 13 attempts in the final few minutes, but was too easy for Niemi to let through,
excluding Henrik Zetterberg’s last goal during a power play leaving two minutes behind for the Red Wings to either tie it or lose the match. They weren’t able to recover after that, losing by one to the Sharks for the second time this season.
"Every night's a playoff game," San Jose coach Todd McLellan said. "For some teams that's a great thing. We put ourselves in this situation, where we have to compete hard every night. We don't get the opportunity for a stinker. That may be a good thing for
us."
Detroit who are looking to topple their Western Conference leader are now only 5 points behind of taking the number one spot while San Jose remains strong at fourth place just shy by 1 point for the third.
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