The San Jose Sharks juggles gas cans while they played with fire in games 1 and 2 of their best-of-7 series with the Nashville Predators. And as we all know....If you play with fire long enough you are bound to get burned, badly. That's exactly what happened in game 3 at the Bridgestone Arena.
The Predators scored four consecutive goals, including two on the power play from James Neal and Filip Forsberg, to defeat the San Jose Sharks 4-1 on Tuesday night.
It's the first time during these playoffs that I thought the Sharks looked vulnerable.
The lopsided loss should be a wake-up call for San Jose. Nashville has held the 5-on-5 advantage in all three games of this series, but thanks to the Sharks special teams advantage won them the first two games.
The script flipped in game 3.
That advantage was null and void on Tuesday night. Nashville finished the game 2-for-5 on the power play, while the Sharks ended 0-for-4.
Like a broken record....the team that wins the special teams battle wins the game.
The Predators are here to win this series. The Sharks are not going to be able to float through this round on merit alone. Nashville is going to make them work for it and right now San Jose is not answering the bell.
San Jose still leads the best-of-7 series 2-1 with Game 4 back in Nashville on Thursday night, but it suddenly feels a lot less comfortable than it did yesterday afternoon.
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Some of you have called out Joe Thornton for his lack of production. There may be something to that. Thornton was awesome during the regular season, but he's not scoring with the same regularity in the playoffs. In fact, he has just three shots on goal in this series and he had zero in the game 3 loss. This is a really poor timing for an offensive slump.
What I want to see is more of that secondary help.
Last night was the first game I noticed Jonas Donskoi. He was a big factor in the first round. Donskoi had three points (2g 1a) in the five games vs. LA. He has a lone assist in this series and it came way back in game 1.
Thanks goodness for Logan Couture and Joe Pavelski, otherwise we may be looking at a 3-0 hole instead of being up 2-1. That duo has combined to score four of the Sharks nine goals in this series.
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Patrick Marleau scored a slick goal, proving he still has that goal-scorers touch. The goal put San Jose up 1-0 at the time.
Despite the negative tone of this blog, the Sharks did have some good chances to break the game wide open. After Marleau's goal it looked like San Jose was poised to tack on more, but Pekka Rinne was on his game.
Martin Jones didn't have an off game, but Rinne was just that much better.
My fear entering this postseason was that whatever goalie the Sharks faced would outplay Jones. Hasn't happened yet....although Rinne is doing his best to change that.
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I'll be watching game 4 very closely to see how the Sharks respond. The way they come out in game 4 will give us a pretty indication of whether this team is going to make a long run or they are simply running out of gas after the emotion win over the Kings.
Pete Deboer has done an excellent job this season of keeping his team focused. He's never let them get too far ahead of themselves. I'm starting to see a loss of focus in this series. Beating the Kings is not the end-all-be-all. There is still work to be done and perhaps the way they lost in game 3 is the 'bulletin board material' Deboer and staff needed to get his teams attention.
Game 4 is Thursday at 6PM PST.
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BTW, the Preds cat thing was pretty lame.
Yawn....
Thanks for reading,
Steve
Follow me on Twitter: @Faultlinehockey 
San Jose Sharks Blogger • 
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