Two overtime games in a row, two overtime goals by rookies.
But this time, it was San Jose Sharks rookie Joonas Donskoi — not the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Conor Sheary — who played hero, winning the game for the Sharks, 3-2, 12 minutes and 18 seconds into overtime in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals. On his home ice, the Finnish rookie delivered San Jose its first-ever Stanley Cup game win and cut the series deficit in half. (The Penguins lead, 2-1).
Donskoi made a nice move around the back of the net and shot it at an angle that Pittsburgh goaltender Matt Murray struggled to pick up.
“There’s always something you could have done,” Murray said. “I was reading the play well, they were rotating, trying to get the puck to the net. It kind of bounced up, a little bit of a bad bounce. It happened pretty quick. I’m not sure where the puck was going. He was just trying to get it on net, and it snuck by.”
Pittsburgh Penguins
Despite the game being the Sharks’ best of the series, the Penguins still looked like the better team. They again outshot their opponent (42-26) for the 12th-straight game of the playoffs, tying the record set by the 2009 Penguins team that won the Stanley Cup and the 2008 Detroit Redwings (that also won the Stanley Cup).
Pittsburgh took an early lead off a slapshot from defenseman Ben Lovejoy about five and a half minutes into the first period. The Sharks tied it up, but with less than a minute to go in the second period, Patric Hornqvist scored on a deflection. Pittsburgh then dominated the ice, and San Jose didn’t get a shot on goal for more than eight minutes. But San Jose tied it up in the third, and everyone knows what happened in overtime.
Despite allowing the game-winning goal, Murray played well in between the pipes, recording 23 saves on 26 shots. He made several nice save to keep the Penguins in the game, in particular late in the second period when he robbed San Jose’s Brent Burns on a nice shot and stopped Joel Ward on a San Jose two-on-one.
Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan said Murray was “solid.”
“He made some big saves for us,” Sullivan said. “He gave us a chance to win tonight.”
Only 22 years old, Murray seems to have the maturity of someone much older, refusing to dwell on that overtime goal and playing extremely well on the big stage for a guy who spent most of the regular season on the bench as the backup goaltender to Marc-Andre Fleury. Murray is 4-0 in the playoffs after a loss.
“After a goal goes in, you can’t take it out of the net, and you can’t take it off the scoreboard, so you move on, and you just worry about stopping the next one,” Murray said. “I made a couple good saves there in the third and a couple in overtime. Unfortunately, (the overtime goal) gets past me, but I felt really good all night, to be honest.”
San Jose Sharks
The Sharks certainly needed this win — no team has ever come back to win the Cup after a 3-0 deficit.
“It’s big,” San Jose centerman and assistant captain Joe Thornton said of his team’s win. “We haven’t had the lead too much in this series. To win this one, it’s a huge confidence booster, and now we just need to continue it in Game 4.”
San Jose took advantage of a double-minor on Nick Bonino for high-sticking Thornton. The Penguins killed of three minutes and 59 seconds on that power play, but Ward snuck a blast past Murray just before Bonino could skate out of the box. Ward’s high shot (the Sharks seemed to be aiming high all night on Murray) caught Murray’s glove – but deflected off it and went in to tie the game up at two.
“We know this is a team that relies on their power play in the playoffs,” Penguins defenseman Ben Lovejoy said. “We’ve been pretty disciplined, and we have to stay out of the box. It’s their trump card. We killed 3:59, and we needed to find a way to kill that last second.”
San Jose might have gotten lucky to come away with the game — Pittsburgh certainly looked like the better team in overtime — but Sharks goaltender Martin Jones came up big. Jones allowed just the two goals for a .952 save percentage.
Game Notes
After the game, Penguins defenseman Ian Cole complained about the ice conditions at the Sharks’ SAP Center. He said the ice “was not good… was not the best.”
Sullivan addressed the ice conditions with his team and told his players they might have to change their game a bit to deal with it.
“Well, we talked with our team about simplifying the game,” Sullivan said. “It’s hard to make a lot of lateral plays when the puck’s bouncing … As the game wore on, we talked to them about just simplifying the game, playing forward, putting pucks at the net, not looking for the extra pass. I think anytime when you play this late in the year, I think a lot of times the ice breaks down, no matter where you are.”
What’s Next
The Penguins and Sharks will take to the ice at the SAP Center on Monday night for a crucial Game 4. Pittsburgh is looking to steal a win away from the Sharks in San Jose. The Penguins are still just two wins away from hoisting the Cup.
Image credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
