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What Happened Last Night: Nashville Predators @ San Jose Sharks Game 5

Posted on by Mark Harris

The Preds were tired after the triple overtime Game 4, sure, but let’s also not forget that the Preds played this same Sharks team in said Game 4. Both teams were there, both teams hopped on a plane and traveled the exact same distance and both teams showed up at the SAP Center last night.

One team dominated the other however and that was San Jose as they mauled the Preds on their way to a 5-1 win and 3-2 series lead as the series turns to Nashville on Monday.

During 5-on-5 play the Sharks out shot the Preds by a count of 26-18 while also edging them in the scoring chances category by the count of 26-21. The Sharks were able to create 12 high-danger scoring chances during 5-on-5 situations while Nashville had only eight.

In all situations, the Preds were out shot 29-25 but out Corsi’d the Sharks 60-59.

The first period proved to be a preview of what was to come to the Preds all night long. San Jose had 16 scoring chances while Nashville had just nine and they capitalized on those opportunities scoring two goals.

Patrick Marleau got the scoring going with 9:13 left in the opening frame. Joonas Donskoi showed tremendous patience skating behind the net and delivered the perfect pass to Marleau who simply wristed the puck home past Pekka Rinne.

The Preds answered right back however less than five minutes later as Mike Fisher continued to show off his game scoring his fifth of the post season. Colin Wilson and James Neal each snagged assists on the tally.

We all can agree that Fisher is without question the best Nashville forward at burying those ‘garbage’ goals and best forward in front of the net, correct?

While Fisher has been good this postseason Joe Pavelski has been better. The Sharks’ captain lit the lamp for his seventh of the playoffs less than two minutes after the Preds managed to knot things up at 1-1. The backhand feed from Joe Thornton on this play is un-freaking-believable.

While the Preds were still alive as they sat in the locker room between the first and second periods, the dagger was slid in just 35 seconds into the middle frame thanks to a sloppy line change and Logan Couture slipping in behind every Nashville skater. Donskoi picked up his second helper of the game on this one with Justin Braun grabbing the secondary assist.

The Preds actually created their fair number of chances in the second frame. They had one more scoring chance than the Sharks with seven and picked up four of the high-danger variety.

But, with just 47 seconds left in the second period, Roman Josi was called for tripping and the Sharks took the Preds gift and thoroughly enjoyed it as they pushed their lead to 4-1 as Pavelski scored his second.

Nashville went 0-3 on the man advantage on the night while this stood to be San Jose’s lone PPG on three chances.

With the game already out of hand, the third period was a bit of a lul while each team put nine shots on goal. One of those nine shots counted for the Sharks, too, as Melker Karlsson scored to give the Sharks a 5-1 win.

Carter Hutton had stepped into the game to relieve Rinne and as he attempted to go behind the net and stop a dumped in puck he skated back to his crease but not before running into Mattias Ekholm forcing him to be a second behind the play and giving San Jose an easy one.

There isn’t much to say about this one if you are a Nashville fan. It was a bad game, nothing went right but you move on because BREAKING NEWS the series is not over yet.

Rinne ended the night with 23 saves on 27 shots. Two of his allowed goals were of the high-danger variety while the other two came from medium-danger areas.

Nashville has been in this situation before, just a couple of weeks ago in fact. Onward to Game 6 at 501 Broadway.

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