Thursday, May 1, 2008

San Jose Sharks 2, Dallas Stars 1

By Mark Stepneski of Andrew's Stars Page

DALLAS — The San Jose Sharks aren't dead just yet. With their season on the line, the Sharks made a strong push early in the third period, got a power play goal from Milan Michalek to snap a 1-1 tie and held on to beat the Stars 2-1 at the American Airlines Center Wednesday night to force a Game 5 in the Western Conference Semifinal Series.

"We still have a 3-1 lead but we recognize that they're going home and they're going to get some life out of this," said Stars coach Dave Tippett. "We have to regroup and go into game five and win another road game. It's a challenge for us."

"You guys have basically buried us already," said Sharks coach Ron Wilson. "We'll just relax, have fun and meet the challenge of having a chance to make history by coming back when you are down 3-0."

Special teams played a key role Wednesday night. The Sharks had lost that battle in the first three games, but they came out on top in that area in Game 4.

"It was just an impressive effort," said Wilson. "Our special teams were excellent tonight, obviously. We got a power play goal, scored shorthanded and they don't get any. Our special teams made a big difference tonight."

The Stars gave up a shorthanded goal for a second straight game, were 0-3 on the power play and put San Jose on the power play six times.

"One of the keys to our success was our discipline and we took lots of penalties tonight," said Stars captain Brenden Morrow. "They capitalized. They've got a lot of skill over there and we took too many tonight."

The Stars will get their next chance to close out the series on Friday when the series shifts to San Jose, where the Stars won the first two games of the series.

The game was tied 1-1 entering the third period, where the Stars have dominated in the playoffs this season, but the Sharks came out and pushed hard, putting a flurry of shots on Stars goalie Marty Turco and then getting a power play when Stars center Mike Modano took a delay of game penalty for putting the puck over the glass.

Less than a minute into to that power play, Michalek redirected a Joe Thornton centering pass past Turco at the 3:26 mark of the period.

"I had a couple of chances before and I'm happy it went in. It was an important goal for us," Michalek said. "Hopefully, they'll start to go in now."

Jere Lehtinen scored the lone goal for the Stars, who got a 22-save performance from Turco.

"We knew they were going to come hard and they got a couple late goals," Lehtinen said. "We have to play better and get our game to the next level in Game Five."

The Sharks got three power plays in the first period, but were able to generate just one shot total and didn't cash in on any of them. Both goalies were sharp. Turco made a nice stop on a redirection by Mike Grier and Nabokov had a pair of nice stops on Niklas Hagman and a nice glove save on a shorthanded chance by Lehtinen.

There were two goals in the second and both came as the results of turnovers. The first one came when Sharks forward Devin Setoguchi dumped the puck into the slot in his own end and it went right to Lehtinen, who roofed a shot over Nabokov at the 5:25 mark to give the Stars a 1-0 lead.

The Stars came close to extending the lead to 2-0 later in the period, but a Brad Richards shot had Nabokov beat high hit the post and went wide.

The Sharks evened it up with a shorthanded goal a little less than four minutes later. San Jose captain Patrick Marleau picked off a Sergei Zubov pass at the Sharks blue, broke in on Turco and scored off a wrist shot at 9:19 of the second to make it a 1-1 game.

"He hasn't played penalty kill all year long," Sharks center Joe Thornton said. "He just has great speed. And obviously when he gets the chance, he's going to put it in the back of the net. That gave our bench a huge lift."

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