Even Sharks' best effort not enough to win
When the shock wore off and the silence lifted in San Jose's locker room Friday night, out came the forced smiles and the Philadelphia comparisons.
The Flyers just rallied from a 3-0 deficit to take an Eastern Conference semifinal series from Boston, so why can't San Jose do the same?
"It's not impossible," said Sharks forward Patrick Marleau, who scored 2 goals for the second consecutive game. "We can try and feed off of that. I'm pretty sure they took it one game at a time and we'll try and do the same."
But when the Sharks have more time to chew over their improbable task, they'll notice a conundrum that might be unsolvable.
They said they played great in Game 3 and don't want to change a thing - the stats and videotape back up their thinking - yet their best ended up as a 3-2 overtime loss in Game 3 at United Center.
How can the Sharks hope to play the same and expect a different result Sunday?
"We know what now," San Jose coach Todd McLellan said. "What now is to regroup and come back with the same effort.
"I was really happy with the way our team played, to a man, whether it was our goaltender, D-men or forwards. We made a few mistakes. They scored some goals. But I thought it was a (heck) of a game."
McLellan shook up his top lines, and the Sharks responded with a supreme effort. They generated much more action than the first two games of the series.
Centers Torrey Mitchell and Manny Malhotra took turns with Marleau and Dany Heatley on the first line.
Usual leading man Joe Thornton, who didn't score in the first two games at San Jose, spent most of his time with Devin Setoguchi and Ryane Clowe.
That didn't get Thornton on the score sheet, though he was on the ice when Marleau flipped in a rebound to force overtime with 4:23 left in the third period.
"I thought it worked out great," Thornton said. "I thought every line had some really good chances. I thought with Todd tinkering with them a little bit - it's not like the lines haven't been going, but I thought it gave (the Hawks) different looks and was pretty effective."
If the final two-thirds of the game had been judged on a score card rather than the scoreboard, the Sharks would have earned the decision.
Every San Jose combination looked strong in the third period as the Sharks outshot the Hawks 18-6. Six of those shots came during the Hawks' six minutes' worth of power plays, but the Sharks controlled the puck and the action even when the teams were at even strength.
If San Jose needs to pick it up in any facet - and this might provide an answer to its riddle - the power play could be better. The Sharks scored on just one of their six opportunities.
"I can't walk in the dressing room (Saturday) and approach that group and say they didn't give an effort," McLellan said, "they didn't work hard, they didn't give us everything they had.
"It's pretty simple. It just didn't go our way tonight. What we have to do now is bottle that game up and find a way to score one more than they do on Sunday afternoon."