Sharks Fall 3-1 in Toronto as Power Play Swings It
San Jose out-hit the Leafs but was outshot and got burned twice on the penalty kill in a 3-1 loss.
Final score: Toronto 3, San Jose 1. And if you're looking for the one thing that decided this game, don't overthink it — special teams. The Sharks killed off three of Toronto's five power plays, but the two they didn't were backbreakers, and that's not good enough on the road against a team with Auston Matthews quarterbacking the man advantage. Meanwhile San Jose's own power play went 0-for-4 and never found a rhythm. You can win a lot of five-on-five battles — and the Sharks did — but special teams is where this one got away from them.
San Jose actually played the better first period. Mason Marchment buried his third goal of the season at 13:54, a backhand finish off a feed from Tyler Toffoli, and on the replay that was a heads-up read — Toffoli found him in tight and Marchment made no mistake. Sharks led 1-0 and looked like the fresher team.
Then the special teams unit let the air out of the building. With 12 seconds left in the second period, Matthews scored on the power play off a feed from Kirill Marchenko to tie it 1-1. That's a teaching moment right there: you cannot give a shooter like that a clean look with the clock running down on a man advantage. With just under five minutes gone in the third, Toronto struck again on the power play — Gavin McKenna finishing off a loose puck in front, assisted by Matthews and William Nylander, to make it 2-1. Two power-play goals in a span of roughly five minutes is how road games slip away. Nick Paul added the empty-netter with 40 seconds left for the 3-1 final.
Give the Sharks credit for the forecheck and the physical game — 19 hits to Toronto's 15 — and they nearly matched the Leafs in shots, getting outshot just 32-31, basically even. Yaroslav Askarov made 29 saves on 31 shots for a .935 save percentage and kept this from getting out of hand; Sergei Bobrovsky was better at the other end, stopping 30 of 31. Matthews was the best player on the ice, finishing with a goal and two assists for three points, and he was in the middle of basically every dangerous sequence late. For San Jose, Marchment's goal and Toffoli's helper were the lone points on the stat sheet.
The giveaway column is worth a look too — 18 for San Jose against 12 for Toronto. When you're already down a man on the penalty kill that often, you can't be loose with the puck in your own end on top of it. That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on the scoreboard until it does.
San Jose doesn't get much time to stew on this one. They're right back on the road Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET against Montreal — back-to-back nights, which makes special teams discipline even more important. Clean up the penalty kill and this is a much different story.