Can the San Jose Sharks avoid elimination after their embarrassing loss?

Round 3 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs has shown that the San Jose Sharks will face no easy task. The St. Louis Blues are one win away from advancing to the Stanley Cup Final and the Sharks will need to win two straight to stop that from happening.

After two exciting rounds of playoff hockey, the San Jose Sharks are now facing elimination in the Western Conference Finals against the St.Louis Blues. Just like the first two rounds, the Sharks jumped out to the early series lead as they dominated in Game 1 but then lost Game 2 before heading out on the road for the next two.

Coming back to SAP Center for Game 5, the Sharks and Blues were tied 2-2 in the series and the Western Conference Finals essentially became a best of three series. After Sunday’s horrendous loss at home for the Sharks, they will have to find some of that magic they have had earlier in the playoffs as they will need to win on the road to keep their playoffs life alive.

Until puck drop on Tuesday evening, they will have many questions to answer surrounding the Game 6 line up and how they will change their game plan to find a way to defeat the Blues and star goaltender Jordan Binnington.

One key question that the Sharks coaching staff will have to answer is the health of Erik Karlsson as he is undoubtedly dealing with an injury that kept him out the entire third period in Game 5. In Game 4, he only played one shift in the final 9 minutes as he again was dealing with what we can only suspect is the same groin injury that he dealt with the latter part of the regular season.

His injury was first apparent when he made a horrible pass to absolutely nobody on his team and it went directly to a Blues player — and then directly into the back of the net.

The Sharks started the first period well as just 12 seconds into the game, Evander Kane hit the post in what should have been the Sharks first goal. Instead, the momentum shifted in the Blues favor and they made it 1-0 not too long after.

Following that first period, the Sharks decided not to show up and give up on this game as in that second period, the Blues scored two goals to extend their lead to 3-0 before the Sharks were able to get their legs under them.

The first goal of the game would end up being the game-winning goal as the Sharks were unable to find the back of the net this game. St. Louis on the other hand, was able to find the back of the net two more times to give us a final score of 5-0. There were plenty of bad things that happened in between that will affect the Sharks in Game 6 and may have turned the series completely around in the Blues favor.

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There were also a lot of questionable hits that, of course, will go unnoticed by the NHL Player Safety who, in the nicest way possible, has made a mess of these playoffs. They have no history of being consistent, they are always consistently wrong, and it will be very surprising to see anything different happen now.

It started in Game 3 when Sharks defenseman Justin Braun took a hit to the head that was not called for a penalty and was not reviewed by the Department of Player Safety. Sunday it was a hit to the head of Tomas Hertl and another hit to the head of Joe Pavelski.

Both Sharks players have dealt with concussions before and my concern is that these hits were direct head contact and caused them to both leave and not return which means they are obviously feeling some sort of effect from it. With Game 6 quickly approaching, these players will have very little time to heal up before the team’s must-win elimination showdown.

It will be hard for the Sharks to bounce back in this series if they do not have their entire team healthy and able to contribute. The one player who did have a good game on Sunday was Evander Kane who had the only good looks.

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Another thing that the Sharks need to do is get people in front of the net, making it hard for Bennington to stop the puck and making sure he has to make two or three saves on each chance. Right now it is one and done for the Sharks and that is not going to get them anywhere other than to a quicker offseason.

There’s not much from Sunday’s loss that the Sharks will look to take into Game 6 as they were completely outplayed and did very little right. What they will need to do is forget about this game and realize that the series is not over until one team wins four games.

They have shown that they are able to win in elimination games this season and will need to string together two straight wins to punch their ticket to their second ever Stanley Cup Final. They need to take it one game at a time and make sure that they come out with the win on Tuesday to bring this series back home for a Game 7.

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They will need to have a full team effort for that to happen and that only happens if everybody is healthy.

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Can the San Jose Sharks avoid elimination after their embarrassing Game 5 loss?

By Matthew Rios | May 20, 2019

Round 3 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs has shown that the San Jose Sharks will face no easy task. The St. Louis Blues are one win away from advancing to the Stanley Cup Final and the Sharks will need to win two straight to stop that from happening.

More from Golden Gate Sports