San Jose Sharks easily overpowers Dallas Stars to win by 6-3 – NHL Updates
San Jose Sharks went on a feeding frenzy on Tuesday night as Dallas Stars was the unfortunate prey. Sharks devoured its hosts, Stars, at the American Airlines Centre in Dallas, Texas, 6-3, for only the second time in five meetings this season.
Joe Pavelski was selected as the first star of the match for his four assists, earning him four points and the second was Jamie Benn from Dallas, picking up a goal and two assists followed by Joe Thornton as the third star, who got two through Kari Lehtonen.
Either team couldn’t penetrate each other during the opening 20 minutes, until the defence fell a little during the second period, when both teams were seen taking shot after shot.
Antti Niemi opened the match, coming out of a fresh loss from Chicago from which he was taken out by Sharks’ coach, Todd McLellan, giving a spectacular performance during the game by making over 37 crucial saves.
"It was important for us to show that we believed in (Niemi) after pulling him in his old arena and in front of those fans”, San Jose’s coach, McClellan, said. "We also thought it'd be a pretty good motivating factor tonight to use him. We didn't think that
his mates would hang him out to dry again like they did yesterday and it worked".
Mike Ribeiro nailed the first of the contest in the early minutes of the second period from behind the net off a sideline pass by Jamie Benn who assisted another to Toby Petersen nearly two minutes later to make it 2-0 while shorthanded.
Dallas couldn’t bear a third loss at home, part of their seven-game home stand, but San Jose couldn’t handle the thought of losing its fourth straight either.
A moment after Ribeiro scored, Stars’ Loui Eriksson went on his way to the locker room with an upper-body injury as he was thrashed by San Jose’s Douglas Murray on the open ice.
This resulted in Steve Ott skirmishing with Murray and both being sent out for a five minute penalty for fighting while Ott was awarded a further 10 minute one for misconduct.
Eriksson did not return for the remainder of the match.
"I think that's one that (the league) will review and I'm sure that they will," Crawford said. "We're hopeful that Loui's going to be all right. He's not feeling very good right now and we'll see where he's at tomorrow”, said Dallas’s coach, Marc Crawford.
San Jose received over 21 minutes of power-play opportunity in the second period alone.
The Sharks smelled fresh blood and woke up.
Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley (power-play) tied up the match midway through the second.
San Jose followed up in the final period by doubling the lead within around 4 minutes with Ryane Clowe and Torrey Mitchell firing it through Lehtonen.
Out of nowhere, Benn backhanded one through Niemi, closing the gap to one, but Thornton and Dany Heatley both scored, shorthanded, on an empty net in the final two minutes to insure the match was in Sharks’ hands.
San Jose is closing in on conference rivals, Detroit Red Wings, only shy by two points to tie it for second while Dallas still has a lot to do in order to secure its seventh place playoff spot with 82 points in the ever changing Western Conference.
They’ll face off for the sixth and last time this season at the end of this month on Thursday, March 3.
Tags: