Monday night was a wild ride in San Jose, as the Sharks and Ducks faced off for Game 3 of their Western Conference quarterfinal in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
6 things to know about the Sharks’ total destruction of the Ducks in Game 3
San Jose is rolling, and Anaheim is in deep trouble.
John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports
Though both teams came out of the gate looking for an edge, the Sharks pounced and made chum of their California rivals in an 8-1 win to take a 3-0 series lead.
Scoring eight goals in a playoff game is rare. A team has done it just 13 times this century. But the numbers from this game get weirder:
1. Thirteen (13!) Sharks put their name on the scoresheet.
Depth wins championships, and no one knows that better than the Sharks, who saw their fourth line and bottom defensive pairing get steamrolled by the Penguins in the 2016 Cup Final. Two years later, and the Sharks are getting contributions from all over the ice. Thirteen different players earned at least a point in Game 3, including all 12 forwards.
Logan Couture had a goal and two assists for his 20th multi-point playoff game. He’s only behind Patrick Marleau (30) and Joe Thornton (25) for the most such playoff games with three or more points in franchise history. (Marleau’s still doing work in Toronto.)
2. Martin Jones stopped so, so many hockey pucks.
Jones set a franchise record for most playoff saves in a regulation game, 45. He allowed just the one goal, a power play tally by Rickard Rakell late in the first period that tied the game at one apiece before the Sharks went on a 7-0 run.
The previous record was 44 saves, set by ... Jones, in Game 5 of the 2016 Stanley Cup Final. Early goals are the story for Anaheim this series, as Jones has yet to allow a goal in the third period. By period, his save percentage so far is .913 in first periods, .974 in second periods, and 1.000 in third periods. Teams had better get what they can early.
3. Eric Fehr scored his first postseason goal since winning a Stanley Cup at SAP Center in 2016, when he was playing for a different team.
What a journey it’s been for Fehr.
The 32-year-old center started the season with the Maple Leafs for their first four games. The Leafs had so much center depth that he wound up being loaned, not to their own AHL affiliated Toronto Marlies, but to the Ducks’ affiliate, the San Diego Gulls. A veteran presence there, he held down the fort while players were called up and sent down over the course of a season that saw a laundry list of injuries to key Ducks’ players. At the trade deadline, he was dealt to the Sharks in exchange for just a seventh-round pick in the 2020 draft.
Since then, he’s steadied the Sharks’ fourth line and proven he’s still an NHL-caliber player. It’s only fitting that he scored his first postseason goal since 2016 at SAP Center, where he played his last playoff game before raising the Stanley Cup there. Fehr’s last playoff tally:
4. Before Monday, the Ducks had won four straight Game 3s, all of which were while they were down, 2-0.
Since 2008, the Ducks have lost the first two games at home four times: the 2008 Western Conference quarters against the Stars, the 2014 conference semis against the Kings, the 2016 conference quarters against the Predators, and the 2017 conference semis against the Oilers. Each time, they’ve been able to push back enough to win Game 3. The Ducks’ organization had done a great job keeping itself off the ropes, until now.
5. The Sharks have lost a series in the last few years after taking a 3-0 lead, but the odds of that happening again are not high.
They’ve had one of the four teams (out of 208) that didn’t win a series after going up 3-0. The Kings came back from that deficit to beat them en route to a Cup win in 2014. But teams in the Sharks’ position still have a 98 percent all-time series winning percentage.
6. If they complete the sweep in Wednesday’s’s Game 4, they’ll be the first team to clinch a playoff series in a game broadcast on the Golf Channel.
The NHL’s TV arrangement is something else.
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