On the Forecheck
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Sharks bite back in Nashville
by Forechecker on 11/17/08 at 11:47 PM ET
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Remember how I mentioned this afternoon that, since I’ve been tracking rebounds and Penalty Plus/Minus recently, I’d make that a focus of tonight’s Sharks/Predators tilt in Nashville? Well, those two aspects of the game proved critical as the Sharks paid the Preds back for ruining their home-ice winning streak last week in San Jose.
San Jose power plays kept the Predators on their heels for much of the first period. The one penalty that really got the crowd fired up came on a Jordin Tootoo charge; Toots had come in hard a few seconds earlier, looking to land a hit on Ryan Clowe, but had to adjust at the last second and went down awkwardly. Clearly frustrated, he took the next chance to slam Joe Pavelski into the boards with what looked like a fairly standard NHL shoulder-to-shoulder hit along the boards, but Tootoo went to the box and the Sharks cashed in on the resulting PP, when Devin Setoguchi took a feed from Thornton and fired far-side past Dan Ellis. At that point the shot clock stood 11-4, and the game was starting to look like a rerun of playoffs past.
One thing that jumped out from the rebound analysis I did a couple weeks ago was that San Jose sees lots of rebound opportunities at both ends of the ice, and that was the formula for Jody Shelley’s goal at 16:05 of the first. Rob Blake put his big shot on net and an old-fashioned scrum ensued in the crease, with Shelley getting rewarded with his first goal of the season to make it 2-0.
Probably the best Nashville pressure early on was applied by the line of Ryan Jones, Scott Nichol and Rich Peverley. Jones drew the only penalty for Nashville in the first, as Patrick Marleau hooked and rode him into the boards. That positive note was to turn horribly negative, however.
With only a few seconds of power play time remaining in the period, Joel Ward fired a centering pass into the San Jose crease, and when Jason Arnott drove hard to the net, he bumped shoulders with Joe Pavelski, went over the top of Brian Boucher and landed head-first in the back of the net, making a hard landing that knocked the net off and stopped play. Arnott lay motionless for several minutes as a stretcher was brought out and a medical team attended to him. He was later taken to Vanderbilt Hospital, with movement and feeling in all his extremities.
The air really got let out of the Predators balloon at 12:17 of the 2nd, when Tomas Plihal let loose a slapper from above the faceoff circle that beat Ellis cleanly and put San Jose up 3-0. When guys like Plihal and Shelly are scoring goals, you know it’ll be a long night.
Rebounds continued to play a key role as Marleau stretched the lead to 4-0. A straightforward point shot resulted in a loose puck in front of Ellis, which Marleau got his stick on and fired into the back of the net. You’d like to see a guy land on his rear end rather than get to that puck.
The Preds’ frustration boiled over at 8:15 of the 2nd as the fists started flying. Greg de Vries squared off with Jody Shelley, and Jordin Tootoo popped Brad Staubitz with a shot that took him down to the ice. Nashville then got a power play shortly after that as Radek Bonk drew an interference call on Brad Lukowich. The Predators fired a few shots with the man advantage, but at 21-12, the shot clock pretty clearly showed the state of the game to that point.
In terms of rebounds, through two periods the Sharks had four rebound shots to Nashville’s zero, and two of San Jose’s goals came off those rebounds (Shelley and Marleau).
In the third, early power plays for Nashville allowed them to catch up in the shot totals, but the Sharks did a kept things easy for Boucher; loose pucks were cleared away, and screens were few and far between. Boucher had a good look at just about every shot coming at him.
The crowd did get some entertainment, however, as Fight Night broke out. First, Scott Nichol dropped the gloves with Joe Thornton to the side of the San Jose net. Considering that Nichol could have benefited from a stepladder just to reach Big Bird’s mug, he gave a good account of himself. Shortly thereafter, Tootoo and Staubitz reacquainted themselves at center ice, and after an initial stumble, Toots got a few good shots in. All in all, a decent scrap which I’m sure you’ll see on HockeyFights.com in the coming days. Off the next faceoff, de Vries and Shelley went at it again, this time with the Sharks knuckle-dragger getting the best of it. As Nichol said after the game, regarding the history between these two teams, “we just bottom line don’t like them.”
With 10:33 left in the 3rd, Nashville finally got on the board as David Legwand got a shorthanded breakaway. At first he put a backhander right into Boucher’s chest, but he picked up the rebound(!) and tucked it home to make the score 4-1. Rich Peverley got another breakaway just seconds later, but Boucher made the stop and held on for a faceoff.
From there, the Preds got one more power play (another one generated by Jones), but only managed one shot. In the end, Nashville went 0-for-11:03 of PP time, which shows how badly they missed Arnott in the final two periods. On the penalty kill, the Predators hung in there admirably, holding San Jose to just the one goal by Setoguchi early on. Still, spending more than 12 minutes on the PK, with the bulk of that in the early going, grounded the Nashville attack before it ever got rolling.
In net, Ellis definitely wasn’t as sharp as we saw last week; the Plihal and Marleau goals in particular were regrettable. It would have taken an absolutely heroic effort (like the 54-save wonder he pulled in San Jose) to keep Nashville in this game. In terms of total shots (Missed, Block, Saved, Goals), the Sharks outgunned the Preds 56-44. Rebounds ended up 6-3 in favor of San Jose, with the defense pairing of de Vries and Koistinen on the ice for half of those San Jose chances.
Extras: Before the opening faceoff there was a presentation recognizing Barry Trotz’s 750th game behind the Predators bench, giving the hometown crowd a rare opportunity to give the coach a standing ovation.
After the game I took the opportunity to ask Ryan Jones about his propensity to draw calls and generate PP opportunities for Nashville, and he seemed genuinely unaware how well he was doing in that regard. “I just try to keep my feet moving and force them to try and slow me down,” he said. Since he was sporting a swollen lip received from a Shark’s elbow that didn’t result in a penalty, I don’t think he was quite convinced that he was getting all the whistles.
This isn’t the first time I’ve played the amateur among the professional media types, having done a handful of games in Detroit in 1997 and 98. But I do want to thank Kevin Wilson and the rest of the Predators PR staff for opening press row to me this evening. I plan on doing a few more of these the rest of the way, so consider this kind of game summary a work-in-progress.
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