San Jose Sharks’ Burst in The Second Period Brings Down Colorado Avalanche, 5-2

After a thrilling seven-game series against the Vegas Golden Knights, San Jose Sharks opened the Western Conference semifinals with a victory over Colorado Avalanche.

It was 5-2 for the boys from California, who experienced many adversities throughout this contest also. But like many times so far, they overcame that too.

The home team had to chase the lead twice during the game, and was in a serious situation when they had to kill a double minor penalty during the second period, with the Avalanche being up 2-1.

But the mental stability of Peter DeBoer’s guys once again emerged to the surface. Despite all the problems and negative factors, this team stepped up, used a couple of minutes in which the guests dropped their guard to land a few strikes and knocked out the Avalanche.

“The first period was a struggle, to be honest with you. I don’t think we had too much energy early on but we kind of felt our groove,” said Joe Thornton.

After just 2:10, Gabriel Bourque put the Avalanche ahead, scoring on a rebound following Martin Jones’ save of Cale Makar’s attempt. The home team replied with 5:16 left in the opening sequence, and the scorer was Gustav Nyquist.

Colin Wilson made it 2-1, and the visiting team had an excellent opportunity in the second to make that lead even bigger because of Brandon Dillon’s double minor penalty.

Jones and the rest of the crew which defended in those moments did a very good job, not allowing Colorado to get the swing, and according to Thornton, this is the moment which decided the entire contest.

“It probably won us the game,” he said.

Shortly after that, it was Thorton himself who executed a 2-on-1 rush, on Marcus Sorensen’s assets, to level the score and to wake up the sleepy crowd at SAP Center.

But what came after that, was pure magic — Kevin Labanc’s moment of creative madness. The 23-year old right winger pushed the puck through the legs of Mikko Rantanen and sent a rocket towards Philip Grubauer. The Avalanche goalie couldn’t do anything about it. It is without a doubt one of the best goals of the playoffs so far.

“What a beauty,” Thornton said. “Just a beautiful goal. A world-class goal, what can I say.”

Kevin Labanc nutmegs Mikko Rantanen on the way to this goal 😳

(via @SanJoseSharks) pic.twitter.com/ev6xi46tb3

— SI NHL (@SI_NHL) April 27, 2019

Brent Burns added another one, half a minute before the end of the second period, to kill all of the guests’ morale and to pretty much solve this event.

Avalanche had no other option but to go all in, which they did, but there wasn’t any reward for that. It was totally the opposite. Grubauer was on the bench, and Colorado tried to score with an extra man in attack. Timo Meier used that and hit an empty-netter putting an end on the Game 1.

Kevin Labanc said after the game that his team just needs to continue with the same recipe from this game, and to keep the swing until the next encounter.

“We just outworked them I think. We were winning our battles in the O-zone and in the D-zone, so we just got to stick with it and keep that momentum going for us in the second game.”

This is the fourth consecutive win for the Sharks in the playoffs. After coming back from a 1-3 deficit against the Golden Knights they are looking very good, but some of the fans are fearing that the fatigue might catch up these boys somewhere at the middle of the series.

Also, San Jose continued with harassing the team from Colorado, since this is their fifth triumph in a row against Bednar’s guys. Although, four of them were at home. Interestingly, in all of those contests, the Sharks scored at least four goals.

Game 2 of this matchup will be played this Sunday, with the beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET in San Jose.