DETROIT Antti Niemi all but had the leather mittens on while doing his best impersonation of a feline thief evading laser alarm triggers in a museum.
The San Jose Sharks goalie was leading his group toward a second theft of a road game in which they were being outplayed in this Western Conference Semifinal series opposition the Detroit Red Wings. After 2 periods including a wild 1st duration while Detroit outshot San Jose 18-6 Niemi had stopped entire 32 shots he faced.
He then persisted to turn away shots in the first half of the third, with the Sharks clinging to a slim 1-0 lead, before he tripped one of those alarms and set off a Red Wings' outburst. Henrik Zetterberg tipped in a goal to knot 1-1, Valtteri Filppula followed it up thanks to a pinpoint pass by Pavel Datsyuk and Detroit was on its way to forcing an improbable Game 7 on Thursday in San Jose.
Still, the play of Niemi was one of the few sunny smudges the Sharks could see behind upon after the last horn sounded.
"He played super," Sharks skipper Joe Thornton said. "He gave us a become to win. We just couldn't win it, but it was just a fantastic extravaganza."
nhlWid=Math.random()*10000000000000000; file.write('Did they think he was by and by swipe dissimilar one from the confounded Red Wings?
"Yeah, when a goalie plays like namely you do," Thornton said. "You score that goal (at Logan Couture in the third) and you thought it might be enough, but it wasn't, so whatever."
In all, Niemi stopped 43 of 45 shots in a game his team was outshot by a margin of 20 including 32-13 in the first two periods. Still, the score remained 0-0 braining into the third thanks largely to his play and also some fortune on missed shots by Danny Cleary and Tomas Holmstrom in the first period.
Cleary buffet Niemi ashore a breakaway merely clanked his shot off the left post and Holmstrom missed a wide open web above a shot off a long rebound when obtaining undercut with period sprinting out in the period. Otherwise, it was the Sharks' huge Finn making the partisan Red Wings multitude groan in frustration time after time.
"I felt beautiful agreeable today, so I ambition to keep doing that (in Game 7)," Niemi said. "Everything affects how you discern the puck. How they play, how our (defensemen) play, so I think those things went beautiful well."
He also didn't mind all the operation, crediting all the shots as keeping him in tempo preferably than nervous with worry.
"It's variety of easier when you get shots all the time," he said. "You linger in the game. You don't have time to think almost it."
He does have a long flight home to think about Game 7 on Thursday, although. He and the Sharks know they'll need to be a lot better than they were in this game whether they want to eventually close out the Wings.
"We've got to have extra vigor in our family rink,
mlb sports jerseys," said Niemi, who acknowledged it felt like they'd pilfer Game 6 when leadership with 10 minutes left. "You never understand what's going to occur. It's one game and I think we're competent to win one game. I don't think it's anything also big. It's great to get a game at home and I think we'll be better. We have the puck extra by home, so I think it's a big avail for us."
The course he played on Tuesday night could've been a big advantage for the Sharks,
nba jerseys, but instead they let it slip through their hands to put themselves on the brink of the season ending for the first time this postseason.
"You can't take many out of this game additional than Nemo was great," Sharks defenseman Douglas Murray said. "We put up an embarrassing effort. It's naught to do with X's and O's. It's about whatever it takes to get yourself prepared. We weren't skating, we weren't making quick plays,
cheap nfl jerseys, we weren't doing everything right. This was unacceptable. But we must migrate away from it. We've got an important game Thursday."Related topics articles:
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