ANAHEIM – Sometimes, there’s no shame in coming up on the short end.
That was the overall tone in the Sharks’ dressing room following a 3-2 overtime loss to the Ducks on Monday in Anaheim, snapping their five-game winning streak. Ryan Kesler’s overtime goal increased Anaheim’s lead over San Jose in the standings to eight points, but the game was simply a hard-fought, well played battle between two worthy adversaries.
It could have gone either way.
“If we play that way, we’ll win more than we lose,” said Joe Pavelski, whose league-leading ninth power play goal tied the game at 1-1 in the third period.
For the third straight game, the Sharks trailed entering the final frame. Also for the third straight game, they responded to take the lead, going up 2-1 on Melker Karlsson’s first NHL marker.
[INSTANT REPLAY: Sharks stunned by Ducks, lose in OT]
Instead of holding on for their 10th win in 11 games, though, Brenden Dillon lost track of Cam Fowler, who put in his fourth of the season from between the circles with less than five minutes to go in the regulation.
Kesler nearly ended it on a late third period power play. He got an open look on Antti Niemi with about half a minute left, but the Sharks’ goalie made one of his best glove stops of the season to earn his team at least point in the standings.
Niemi, who finished with 30 saves, said afterwards he thought the shot was going in. Pavelski and Todd McLellan credited their netminder for his strong performance, which also included an exceptional pad denial of Ryan Getzlaf shortly after Pavelski had tied it.
Pavelski said: “Nemo had some awesome saves, they were fun to watch. You don’t want to give up those chances, but when he’s going like that we can be aggressive and play our system, and know that he’s there.”
“Nemo made some remarkable saves when we needed them and we broke down,” McLellan said.
Niemi was in net for the Sharks’ first two wins over the Ducks earlier this season. The loss snapped a personal seven-game winning streak sandwiched around a minor injury.
“I felt very good,” Niemi said. “Saw the puck well, saw their players quite well, too. Good reads, thinking about what’s going to happen.”
Although Karlsson’s shot was stoppable, Andersen had some fancy saves of his own in the first period, when the Sharks outshot the Ducks 15-7 but couldn’t push one by. His best stop came on Tomas Hertl late in the opening frame, and he also grabbed a Pavelski wrist shot on a three-on-one rush less than four minutes into the match.
The Sharks were outplaying the Ducks up to the point that Rickard Rackell gave Anaheim the lead 7:20 into the second period, on an unfortunate bounce from San Jose’s perspective. That was the only goal through 40 minutes.
“It felt like we probably deserved better up until then. That was the energy,” Pavelski said. “It didn’t really feel like we needed to change the way we were playing to get some success.”
[RELATED: Controversy surrounds Scott's hit on Jackman]
They didn’t change anything, and to McLellan, that was a good sign. The coach voiced concerns in the morning about how focused his team would be in the final game before four straight days off for Christmas.
Even though it was a loss, the Sharks passed the test. That's encouraging in the big picture.
“It answered some questions that I had going in,” McLellan said. “Are we going to be prepared and focused and could we compete in this type of game right before Christmas? We did that. We had some good leadership in the locker room and everybody found a way to scramble to get a point on the road.”
Pavelski said: “We’ve got a group of guys that believe right now in what we’re doing and we’re playing good and playing the right way. It’s been fun hockey. We think we can play with any team.”
