San Jose Sharks: Top 3 takeaways from Game 1 of the first round
By Justin Fried
The San Jose Sharks have jumped out to an early 1-0 series lead against the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Here are our top three takeaways from Game 1.
The San Jose Sharks kicked off their 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs run in style with a convincing 5-2 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday night to take a 1-0 series lead over their Pacific Division rivals.
Despite heading into the game on a bit of a cold spell — they had lost nine of 10 before winning their final two games of the season — the Sharks came out firing and overwhelmed Vegas from the very beginning. The Golden Knights always seemed a step or two behind and were dominated on the boards all night long.
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It was a complete team effort as the offense stepped up scoring five goals, the defense played strong throughout the night, and even goalie Martin Jones — we’ll get to him — had his best game in quite some time.
With that, let’s take a look at three of the top takeaways from the Sharks Game 1 victory over the Golden Knights.
3. This should be a very physical series
Not that this was unexpected, but Game 1 certainly delivered from a physical standpoint. The two teams battered and bruised each other in what was a true display of playoff hockey.
In total, the Sharks racked up 42 hits to Vegas’ 41 for a whopping total of 83 hits throughout the night. Sharks winger Timo Meier led the way with nine hits but the always chippy Evander Kane wasn’t too far behind with seven of his own.
Kane even got into it a couple of times with members of the Golden Knights including one shoving match with defenseman Deryk Engelland in the second period. Neither team backed down physically and the hard hits were a constant theme throughout the night.
In a game that proved that we should expect the unexpected with 3-on-3 regulation hockey and a goal scored off Joe Pavelski‘s face, we were ultimately treated to exactly what we thought we would see.
A very physical game from start to finish.
And given the way that this series started out, don’t expect anything less from the remaining games between these two teams. This should be a blood bath, and it sure as heck is going to be fun to watch.