SAN JOSE
– San Jose completed a three-game sweep of a four-day homestand
Sunday with a 3-1 win over the Colorado Avalanche at sold-out HP
Pavilion.
The Sharks go on the road this week, playing the Chicago
Blackhawks Wednesday and Nashville Thursday before hosting Phoenix
Saturday.
SAN JOSE – San Jose completed a three-game sweep of a four-day homestand Sunday with a 3-1 win over the Colorado Avalanche at sold-out HP Pavilion.
The Sharks go on the road this week, playing the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday and Nashville Predators Thursday before hosting Phoenix Saturday night.
San Jose has 106 points, atop the Western Conference by one point over Detroit. The Boston Bruins pace the Eastern Conference with 102 points, five ahead of the New Jersey Devils.
Three weeks, 10 games left in the regular season for both San Jose and Detroit. The winner of the Western Conference will enjoy the home-ice advantage in the three best-of-seven series needed to reach the Stanley Cup Finals.
Detroit, the defending Presidents’ Trophy winner emblematic of the NHL’s team with the most points in the regular season, has six home games left, San Jose four. Detroit has two games left with Eastern Conference teams, a home game with the New York Islanders and road game in Buffalo. San Jose spends the rest of the season playing Western Conference foes.
Alexei Semenov earned assists on both second-period goals as the Sharks built a 2-1 lead.
San Jose weathered a five-minute Colorado power-play in the scoreless first period. Jonathan Cheechoo was given a five-minute boarding penalty and a game misconduct for sending Colorado’s Lawrence Nycholat into the boards. Nycholat did not play the rest of the game.
The Sharks needed all but three seconds of their first power play opportunity to take a 1-0 lead.
A crisp pass from Marc-Edouard Vlasic at the left point to Semenov at the right point set up the scoring play. Semenov’s strong shot toward the net was deflected by winger Jamie McGinn over the glove of goalie Andrew Raycroft and into the net at the 9:25 mark.
Scott Hannan, the former Shark, registered his first goal of the season when he finished a 3-on-2 rush at 11:04 of the second for the 1-1 tie.
San Jose took a 2-1 lead with 34.3 seconds left in the second period. Semenov, on the left side of a 2-on-1 rush, found Milan Michalek open at the edge of the crease for the point-blank goal, Michalek’s 22nd goal of the year.
Colorado had several point-blank opportunities to pull even in the third period, but either an alert defense or strong goaltending from Evgeni Nabokov preserved the lead. Nabokov finished with 31 saves in gaining his 37th win of the year.
Colorado’s Ruslan Salei was sent to the box for interference at 8:30 of the third. At the end of the penalty, Salei was able to get behind the Sharks defense to take a head-man pass and move toward Nabokov. The goalie turned back Salei’s hard shot from 10 feet out.
Devin Setoguchi scored an empty-net goal with 21.3 seconds to play to give San Jose the two-goal cushion.
