Sharks Still Biting!

 “He was fantastic,” said Sharks coach Pete DeBoer about Jones’ performance.

 Not just fantastic, but season-extending.

With the Sharks facing potential elimination from their first Stanley Cup Final, Jones made 44 saves in a 4-2 Sharks victory. This means that the beloved Los Tiburones will return to San Jose for a Game 6 on Sunday, trailing three games to two but still alive in the series.

And if Jones keeps playing the way he did Thursday, there may be even more hockey after Sunday.

Do you know what Martin Jones accomplished here Thursday night? He took the largest wet blanket ever and threw it over this entire city.

When the Sharks team bus pulled into Consol Energy Center a few hours before faceoff, the players couldn’t help noticing that tens of thousands of Penguins fans were already camped out in folding chairs and blankets outside the building. They were watching a huge television screen set up in the arena plaza. And they were preparing to celebrate a Cup clinching.

In other parts of Pittsburgh in public areas, similar gatherings were taking place. This is a region that loves its sports and its many championship teams–Steelers, Pirates, Penguins–but by fate had not seen any of those teams win a title inside the city limits since 1960 when Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates hit a home run to win the World Series.

The Penguins, as a good luck totem, invited the 79-year-old Mazeroski here at the game in a luxury suite, waving one of the yellow towels and screaming along with the 18,608 inside.

To Jones, it was all white noise. Or who knows? Maybe he hears smooth jazz in his head when he’s in the net. He sure acts like it.

After the Sharks took a 3-2 lead at the end of a wild first period, Jones was locked in as he quietly swatted away 31 pucks off the Penguins’ sticks over the final two periods. Sometimes, he used his pads to slide across the crease and stop rebounds.

All in all, it was a virtuoso concert that left his teammates struggling to remember which of Jones’ saves they liked the best.

“Off the top of my head, he made a couple early that were back-door kick saves and were big,” said defenseman Paul Martin.

“They all blend together for me,” said centerman Joe Thornton.

“My favorite was all 44 during the game,” said defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic.

“The one save on (Nick) Bonino, he bailed me out,” said defenseman Justin Braun. “And there was one from the wing where he got it with his shoulder and where, if he’s just off a little bit in positioning, it’s a goal.”

Jones’ positioning was not even a little bit off through the entire tense evening. Yes, he was helped by the posts a couple of times. But the two goals he allowed were both deflections. One caromed off Braun’s skates in front of the net after the Pens’ Evgeni Malkin threw the puck toward the crease. The other was on a tipped puck off the skilled stick of Carl Hagelin.

The 44 saves by Jones were a career high. The Sharks’ record for playoff saves by a goalie is 56, set by Wade Flaherty in a 1995 double-overtime victory at Calgary. Flaherty was phenomenal in that game. But Jones was on another planet during his entire 60 minutes on the ice Thursday.

“He made some big-time saves,” said Logan Couture. “He’s been playing like this for a long time, regular season, playoffs. A lot of people unfortunately don’t get to see him, us being on the West Coast. He’s been unbelievable for us.”

Jones himself said he was helped by the way his teammates cleaned up some of the pucks that were left at his feet.

“A lot of stuff around the net tonight,” Jones said. “I thought everybody did a good job battling around the net. They throw a lot of pucks to the net. That’s just kind of the way they play. I thought we were good in the D zone . . . Kind of made life a little difficult for myself a few times tonight with a couple rebounds. Just tried to get over it and take away the bottom of the net.”

Unexpected, too. At least unexpectedly this good. The Sharks gave up their first round 2016 draft pick in a trade for Jones last summer. Some thought it was a risk, given that the 26-year-old Jones had never been a regular NHL starter. No risk any more. Only the reward.

How does such a young player devlop such inner goalie peace? Jones grew up in North Vancouver, B.C., where his father worked for the hometown NHL Vancouver Canucks in arena operations and where his mother apparently fed Jones cool beans and never-nervous porridge every day.

DeBoer knew a little about Jones before he arrived at the Sharks’ training camp last September. But with each passing day, as the team had an up-and-down first few months of the season, respect grew.

“I think right away you recognized his composure, how calm and cool he was even in that situation,” DeBoer said. “Then the big question was whether there was a competitive edge there with that composure. That’s always the million-dollar question.

We started the season, it didn’t start as smoothly for any of us as we wanted . . .winning one, losing one, including him. Kept throwing him out there, he kept finding a way. I think we all recognized then that he had that competitive edge.”

Thursday night, the edge was sharp enough to cut through the eager anticipation of an entire Pennsylvania metropolis. And even the low-key Jones admitted he got a special kick out of doing that.

“I think everybody does, yeah, winning the elimination games,” Jones said.

Outside, the crowd dispersed.

Mercury News.com

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