This one started off.... Not awesome. Logan Couture scored 30 seconds into the game. We had a sense of impending doom. But Karly quickly answered with one of his own, and it was a whole new game from there! With a beauty of an assist, Wild Bill clocked his 20th of the season. An interference call on the Sharks Michael Hailey put the Knights on the Power Play. The Knights ended a 9 power play scoring drought with a goal from Mark Stone. Welcome to the Stone Age, Sharks! Marchy and Smith would each get their 2nd assists on the game. Things started to heat up between the Sharks and the Knights with a couple hits coming from allover the ice. Marchy and Kevin Labanc got offsetting penalties, making it 4 on 4. Old man Joe Thornton came though for the Sharks to get things tied up with an unassisted goal. The Knights answered back with Marchy knocking in his 20th goal of the season, again assisted by Reilly Smith. Both players picked up their 3 point of the game.
The Sharks Jones pulled from the game to avoid him taking a beating. The Grim Reaver laid a big hit on THEIR Karlsson (not the good one) during a line change, causing a bit of a kerfuffle. Michael Hailey was having none of that business and pulled Reavo out off the bench. The Knights went on yet another power play, and the Sharks ran a good penalty kill up until the final 15 seconds. They were called for too many men on the ice. With about 1 minute until the end of the period Alex Tuch was called for hooking.
The second period, the Knights started off by killing Tuch's penalty. Almost immediately after that PP was killed, Nabber got called for cross checking. Back to the box they go! Evander Kane would got called for a high stick to Nick Holden's face helping the Knights kill off the penalty. It was penalty after penalty and a lot of physical play. These two teams seems to give one another fits every time they face off. The Kngihts took another penalty, but on this kill, they spent most of the time on the offensive attack.
This show of undisciplined game play continued with each team taking more penalties. Subban came correct with some great saves on a couple of different runs at the net. I forget which PP it was, but Paul Stastny banked one with an assist from Colin Miller and Max Pacioretty. This marks 10 on the season for Pauly Walnuts. Surprisingly, both teams played out the rest of the period with no penalties. Just before the end of the period the Sharks had a loooong offensive possession that burned out the Knights. Bellemare sacrificed his body by taking a big hit into boards from Brett Burns to get the puck out of the zone.
The Knights came out looking like they were taking notes from Logan Couture's first period goal. Reilly Smith knocked one in with an assist by William Karlsson. Smith recorded his first career 4 point game! The Sharks started to play some good disciplined hockey. Colin Miller was called for two penalties the first a holding that would lead to Joe Thornton crashing into the boards. This penalty would be killed off. His next one would come just over 8 minutes late but the Knights weren't so lucky this time. 21 seconds into the power play Logan Couture got his 2nd goal of the game assisted by Kevin Labanc and Big Burly Brett Burns. The Sharks pulled Dell with 2:50 left in the 3rd to try and cut into the 5-3 lead. It would take the Knights 11 whole seconds to take advantage of that sweet sweet empty net with Marchy getting his 24th goal of the season. This also marks For Marchy, this was back to back games with 2 goals!! The goal would be assisted by defensemen Deryk Engelland & Nate Schmidt. With a score of 6-3 in favor of the Knights, this one was pretty much wrapped up, but alas. . . There were more penalties to be had! Barclay Goodrow was called for a slashing on Cody Eakin and Eakin would stay on for the power play. 11 seconds later Eakin made them pay by knocking in one of his own, and capped off the game with his 19th goal of the season; tying his career best. The goal was assisted by Shea Theodore and Nate Schmidt. Making the Nates Second assisted on the night. The Knights win marks back to back games with 6 or more goals.
We all know one player doesn't make a team, but this is an entirely different team with Mark Stone. Also, big props to Subban, who has been asked to step up in big situations, and absolutely delivers with the .923 save percentage.
3 STARS OF THE GAME
1st STAR Reilly Smith w/ 1 Goal & 3 Assists
2nd STAR Jonathan Marchessault w/ 2 Goals & 2 Assists
3rd STAR Logan Couture w/ 2 Goals
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