Sharks Unable to Overcome Abysmal Second Period, Fall 5-0 to Sabres
The San Jose Sharks were back in action on Thursday night as they hosted the red-hot Buffalo Sabres in the two teams’ final meeting of the regular season. The Sabres had a dominant victory during their last meeting with the Sharks, winning 6-3. As a result, the Sharks were looking to avenge their previous performance.
The Sharks were buzzing early on, maintaining quite a bit of offensive pressure and limiting dangerous chances on the rush. Kiefer Sherwood nearly gave the Sharks an early lead five minutes into the game when his shot from the slot forced Buffalo’s goaltender, Alex Lyon, to stretch across the crease to make the save. The game started off very fast paced, going all the way to the first TV timeout before there was a stoppage of play.
Roughly nine minutes into the game, Alex Nedeljkovic got his first major test of the night when Jack Quinn and Jason Zucker each had a chance. Nedeljkovic denied Quinn’s shot, before Macklin Celebrini blocked Zucker’s follow-up chance. Alex Wennberg took the Sharks’ first penalty of the night 11 minutes into the first period, when he high-sticked Tage Thompson.
The Sharks killed off the penalty. Macklin Celebrini got a breakaway chance with roughly six minutes remaining in the first, but was hauled down by the Buffalo defense. To the dismay of the SAP Center crowd, no penalty was called on the play.
A couple of minutes later though, the Sharks would get their first power play of the net when Zucker was called for high-sticking. Celebrini danced through the weakened defense to generate the Sharks’ best scoring opportunity of the power play, but Lyon was able to stonewall him, keeping the puck out of the net. After 20 minutes, the game remained deadlocked at 0-0.