A disaster of an early third period, along with most areas of the Sharks’ game falling apart doomed Team Teal in the first of two consecutive home games against the Calgary Flames in a 5-2 defeat.
As always, let’s begin with how this game started, in which the Sharks were right in it. During the first half of the first period, an errant turnover by Jaycob Megna led to Tyler Toffoli scoring the first goal of the game for the Flames. The Sharks answered back about four minutes later on a beauty of a play, with Erik Karlsson faking a shot and making a slick pass to Timo Meier, who buries it for his 16th goal of the year on the power play to even it at one. In addition, Erik Karlsson recorded his 40th point of the season and 700th career point, becoming the fastest in Sharks franchise history to reach 40 points in a season and the fastest active defenseman in the NHL to reach 700 career points (871 games). Tomas Hertl recorded the other assist on this equalizer.
The Flames went ahead 2-1 at around the six-minute mark of the second period via Milan Lucic. About five minutes later, Jonah Gadjovich and Dan Gilbert dropped the gloves and went at it. This fight was coordinated between the two earlier in the period, with both players trading blow after blow. It was a right hook by Gadjovich that knocked out Gilbert in a nice, solid tilt between the two, with Gilbert heading to the dressing room for repairs afterwards.
The first few minutes of the third period was when disaster struck. Seconds into the start of the third, Elias Lindholm scored two goals seconds apart. The first of the two goals by Lindholm was scored on the Flames power play, while the second one came right after that power play ended. Around the two-minute mark of the third, Dillon Dube caught Kaapo Kahkonen in a vulnerable position outside of his crease and scored to put the Flames up 5-1. Soon after, David Quinn called timeout to have a brief team meeting on the bench. This timeout helped this Sharks team get their act together to an extent, but the damage had already been done. Team Teal was able to get one back to cut their deficit to three on the power play via Tomas Hertl's 11th goal of the year from Logan Couture and Erik Karlsson. Moments before the end of this game, Evgeny Svechnikov took a high stick to the face and had to head to the dressing room for repairs.
Kaapo Kahkonen was given the start in the second game of this back-to-back set and wasn't that great, making 20 saves and giving up five goals. Before this game, the Sharks had activated Matt Nieto off the IR and transferred Luke Kunin to the IR in place of Nieto.
This game had some highlight-reel moments, but otherwise it sucked. The Sharks and Flames face each other again at SAP Center on Tuesday at 7:30 pm PT, in which the Sharks will try to earn a split in this particular two-game set.
Sources: NBC Sports Bay Area/California, NHL App, Bay Area News Group
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