Deck stacked against Sharks in 4-0 shutout loss to Vegas

SAN JOSE — Instead of those damn Yankees, it's those damn Golden Knights.

Alex Tuch scored a pair of goals in a 4-0 win over the San Jose Sharks. Marc Andre-Fleury made big saves when he had to. The Vegas goaltender stopped all 24 shots on goal for his fourth shutout of the year, improving his record to 12-3.

"I thought we took some water on early in the game," coach Bob Boughner said. "We spent a lot of time in our end. Fleury made some very big and timely saves early in the game where things could have been a little different but the Sharks have played five games in the last eight days and I thought you could see that as the game went on."

Clearly the Sharks are a team that can't compete against a team like Vegas that has so many stars on the roster. Timo Meier, a very important player on a team that needs him along with Evander Kane and Logan Couture, was scratched with a lower body injury just before the game. Meier has scored only four goals but tied for first on the team with 11 assists.

The Sharks nemesis has San Jose's number at least in the regular season. All time, Vegas is 11-1-4 against San Jose.

A more glaring statistic courtesy of Sharks play-by-play announcer Dan Rusanowsky, when Team teal is down 2-0 to start a game, the lifetime record is a ghastly 69-401-60 and 1-5-1 this year.

All things considered, the Sharks haven't been terrible this season but they're far from being a playoff team. If you recall, they had to start their season exclusively on the road because of COVID-19 evicting them from the Shark tank and forcing them to play on the road the first month and then playing their first two "home" games in Arizona.

Turnovers just killed San Jose. On the first goal, following a breakaway shot from the slot by Joel Kellman, the Sharks had trouble getting back on defense. Brent Burns lost the puck at center ice and that left Mario Ferraro as the sole defender against Chandler Stephenson and Mark Stone and after a little tic-tac-toe passing, Stone with an easy goal beating Devyn Dubnyk on the stick side and a 1-0 Vegas lead.

On the second Vegas goal, Patrick Marleau had difficulty getting to the puck behind the Golden Knights net. A pass fired along the boards was batted down by Ferraro just inside the blue line but after he put the puck on the ice, he fanned on the clearing attempt and Alex Tuch said thank you very much, skated in a stride and fired a blast from the back of the right cicle to make it 2-0 at 5:01 of the second period.

Late in the period, the puck was behind the Sharks net but once again they failed to clear the puck. Burns slaps it, but it deflects off Logan Couture and the puck trickled out in front of the crease and Tuch with a backhand flip, scored his second of the night.

The final nail in the coffin to make it 4-0 was a hard shot fired by Reilly Smith top shelf over the glove side of Dubnyk who in disgust, whacked the puck away from him after the score.

Because it was a back-to-back, Devan Dubnyk started and made 28 saves in the loss.

While the Sharks continue to fight, trying to win this game after expending so much energy Friday night was asking too much after coming back down 3-0 only to lose 5-4 in overtime. The absence of Meier only exacerbated the limited depth but there is a silver lining.

"Obviously we want to be winning games but all these guys are playing great," Dubnyk said. "The more ice time, the more games and minutes they can get, the more they're going to figure it out and we've got some real promising young guys so it's certainly a good thing they're getting the ice time."