ST. LOUIS -- Whatever hopes the Sharks had of being one of the few NHL teams to come back from a 3-1 series deficit ended Saturday night with a 3-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues in Game 5.
Two goals 45 seconds apart by Blues forwards Jamie Langenbrunner and David Perron midway through the third period were all the offense St. Louis needed to offset the 1-0 lead the Sharks had taken on a goal by Joe Thornton in the final minute of the second. An empty-net backhand shot by Andy McDonald with 38.2 seconds left sealed the outcome.
The first-round exit capped a disappointing 2011-12 campaign that saw the Sharks squeeze into the playoffs the final week of the season, finishing as the seventh seed and facing a second-seeded St. Louis team that was 4-0 against San Jose this season.
The early exit came after two consecutive appearances in the Western Conference finals and was the quickest end to a Sharks season since the team was upset in 2009 by the Anaheim Ducks.
Sharks coach Todd McLellan made it clear earlier in the day he was going to push his top players hard.
"We'll push them â€" the 'there is no tomorrow' cliché that we're all using," he said. "We can run our horses until they die basically and that's what we'll do. If anybody's playing well, we'll run them and get the most out of them as possible."
McLellan's plan became clear as soon as lineups were announced as he chose to go with Jason Demers as
a seventh defenseman. With only 11 forwards suited up, that meant "horses" such as Joe Thornton and Logan Couture were double-shifted to fill the vacancy on the fourth line.After a scoreless first period that saw the Sharks outshot 8-3, the game opened up more in the second with each goalie coming up with big saves. Niemi's biggest may have been the quick shot from a pinching Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo early in the period while Elliott stopped a wraparound by Thornton.
But with 41 seconds left in the period, the Blues goalie had no chance on another shot by Thornton.
St. Louis failed to clear the puck, but Torrey Mitchell whiffed on a shot from the slot. Daniel Winnik retrieved the puck behind the Blues net, then zigzagged through traffic before sending a pass to the Sharks captain, who gave San Jose its first lead since its overtime victory in Game 1.
But the Blues opened up offensively in the third and it paid off at 11:16 when ex-Shark Scott Nichol fired a shot that Niemi stopped but couldn't control and Langenbrunner pounced on the rebound.
Then on the shift that followed, Blues forward T.J. Oshie heard Pietrangelo tapping his stick for the puck at the blue line and got it to him. The defenseman then fired a shot that Perron deflected past Niemi at 12:01 for the winning goal.
The series win was St. Louis's first since 2002.
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak's Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks.
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