Heartbreak Ridge and the Best Sharks Win of the Season

Imagine you're playing a solidified projected playoff contender in the St Louis Blues, and you are dominating. Imagine you're doing everything you need to do to win, Martin Jones; you're starting goaltender is phenomenal and then imagine you watch that all slip away with 40 seconds to go in regulation, then watch them give up the game-winning power play goal in overtime with a minute left to play. That's was the Sharks reality Thursday night, February 18th. Eliminating any dreams the Sharks had of two regulation wins in a row for the first time this season.

With all that said, imagine your young, relatively inexperienced defense looked pretty damn good out there despite being without their $11m stalwart.

A Saturday matinee matchup saw Devan Dubnyk return for the San Jose Sharks for the 1st time in 2 weeks. The Sharks go up 3-0 against the Blues with tallies by Kane, Couture, and rookie, Rudolfs Balcers with his first-ever NHL goal. Blues and the Sharks then trade the next two goals, including the first goal of the season for Patrick Marleau. Blues soon after tilt the ice, scoring 3 unanswered goals to tie the affair, before Logan Couture shoots a puck off the back of Jordan Binnington, scoring the game-winner for a 5-4 victory for the sharks.

On February 22nd, we saw the Minnesota Wild come to town, and Brent Burns gets the Sharks out to an early lead, but that's where I end drawing positives from this game. The wild end up scoring six goals in a 6-2 rout of the Sharks. Couture also contributed a tally at the 11:57 mark of the 2nd period.

 On Saturday evening February 27th, the St Louis Blues come to San Jose for an absolute slugfest. Neither team scoring more than one goal in a row at any point. The story of the game was Jordan Binnington being pulled after the third shark's goal, going on an absolute tirade trying to fight the Sharks bench, fake punching Erik Karlsson as he skated by before getting into a small tussle with goaltender Devin Dubnyk before being escorted off the ice. Saw 2 goals apiece by Timo Meier and Evander Kane with tallies as well by LeBanc and Couture before ultimately surrending the game-winning goal to St Louis in the third period for a 7-6 loss.

Next up, we saw the high-powered offense of the Colorado Avalanche come to the tank for a 2-game set with the return of Erik Karlsson and the San Jose Sharks. The Avs get off to a two goal lead with goals at the end of the first and the beginning of the second. that is where this game becomes drastically different. The Sharks go on to score 6 unanswered goals (tallies by Simek, LeBanc, Meier, Karlsson, Leonard, and Kane) and go on to put on the best total team performance of the season in a resounding 6-2 win. San Jose scored 12 goals in the past 2 games, putting to bed any talk that the sharks have a hard time scoring. Imagine if Erik Karlsson played at this level every single game we'd be talking about a much different season.