The San Jose Sharks are now the best team in the National Hockey League. With 11 games left in the regular season, the Sharks finished strong, completing a 3 game sweep of their homestand after defeating the Colorado Avalanche 3-1 in the second game of a back to back.
After a 5-2 win against Dallas the day before in which San Jose gave up the first goal, Todd McLellon wanted to emphasize a better start to their game. It took a period and a half but the Sharks scored first, as Jamie McGinn scored his 3rd goal of the season on the power play, tipping an Alexei Semenov shot past Andrew Raycroft to give San Jose the 1-0 lead. But under two minutes later, Scott Hannan scored his first goal of the season against his former team, as Wojtek Wolski slid a pass across the ice through two San Jose defenders onto Hannan's stick, who shot the puck through the legs of Evgeni Nabokov. But with 35 seconds left in the game, Semenov made a perfect pass to Milan Michalek on a 2 on 2 rush. Michalek took the pass off his skate and onto his stick to tip it into a practically empty net to give San Jose the 2-1 lead.
The third period was dominated by the Avalanche's offense, who got 17 shots on goal compared to San Jose's 10. But Evgeni Nabokov stopped them all, including a breakaway chance by Ruslan Salei who was behind San Jose's defense as he had just gotten out of the penalty box. The Avalanche pulled Raycroft with a little over a minute to go, and Nabokov made a couple of key saves as several Avalanche were crashing the net, but Devin Setoguchi made a play at his defensive blue line to steal the puck. He brought it into the offensive zone, made a little stutter step to get around the lone Avalanche defender, and rifled the puck down the middle of the empty net to secure the win with 22 seconds to go.
After going 6 games in a row putting up 30 or more shots on goal, San Jose fell short by a couple against the Avalanche, as they were outshot 32 to 28. The goal by Scott Hannan was his first in 85 games. San Jose spent almost half of the first period killing off penalties, as Patrick Marleau and Jonathan Cheechoo took a combined 7 penalty minutes. Cheechoo took a 5 minute boarding major and was ejected from the game with a 10 minute game misconduct 13 minutes into the first period, as he hit defenseman Lawrence Nycholat from behind, driving him head-first into the boards. Nycholat would not return to the game after the hit. The Sharks killed off both penalties, and after giving up 3 power play goals to the Coyotes on Tuesday, San Jose has been a perfect 8 for 8 on penalty kills through 3 games, and are perfect against the Avalanche this season, killing off all 8 Colorado power plays through 3 meetings with them this season. Alexei Semenov assisted on the first two San Jose goals, giving him his second career multi-assist game. He took the first star award, and during the postgame interview, Jeremy Roenick stuffed a towel full of shaving cream into the face of Semenov. Semenov had missed the previous two games because San Jose had too many defensemen. With the win, San Jose now has 106 points, good enough for first place in the league with a 1 point lead over Detroit. The loss is another of many for the Avalanche, who are suffering one of their worst seasons in franchise history as they are last place in the Western Conference with 64 points. San Jose's next game will be on the road in Chicago, as they play their first game of a back to back against the Blackhawks who are battling for fourth place in the Western Conference.
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