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Sharks enter Game 3 with some of the same issues

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As the series shifts to San Jose, the Sharks find themselves in a 2-0 hole against the Pittsburgh Penguins. What is the likelihood the the Sharks will able to climb back in the Stanley Cup Final on home ice?

After dropping Game 1, the San Jose Sharks set to correct many of their missteps in Game 2, but those efforts didn’t materialize into results.

More specifically, they wanted to cut down on turnovers and get off to a better start.

“We made some soft plays,” Joe Pavelski told CSN Bay Area in regards to some of the Sharks’ turnovers in Game 2. “The plays off the wall, they have done a really good job and we turned some pucks over and that leads to a lot of zone time for them.”

In particular, a Roman Polak turnover led to Phil Kessel’s marker. As Sharks coach Peter DeBoer noted though, “if you’re not scoring, every mistake you make potentially costs you the game.” In other words, if San Jose was enjoying more success at the other end of the ice, errors like Polak’s might not be so dire.

Which ties into getting off to a better start, but the Penguins outshot them 11-6 in the first period and 12-5 in the second.

So they’re left to go into Game 3 with some of the same problems that they had going into Game 2. Only now the Sharks have less time to address it.

Of course it still has to be stressed that both of the Penguins’ wins have been by just one goal and they came in Pittsburgh, so now the Sharks will get an opportunity to defend their own home. A 2-0 series deficit in the Stanley Cup Final is hard to come back from, but that doesn’t mean the Sharks won’t.