Golden Knights continue to assert dominance over Sharks

There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and the Vegas Golden Knights beating up on the San Jose Sharks.

On Sunday, the third proved true once again when the Golden Knights completed the season sweep of the Sharks with a dominant 7-2 victory.

The action started quickly for the Golden Knights, who jumped on the Sharks early. After a stretch of strong play, Ivan Barbashev was able to find Jack Eichel out in front of the net. Despite the best attempts of Yaroslav Askarov to keep it out of his net, Eichel was able to catch the Sharks goaltender sprawling and fire it in to get the scoring going.

A little over two minutes later, the Sharks were able to get back on a lucky break. A Zach Whitecloud block found the stick of Collin Graf, who fired a shot that deflected off of Noah Hanifin and past Carl Lindbom to tie the game at one.

Shortly after, however, the Golden Knights continued to ride their power play to success. Eichel’s pass across the slot was facilitated by Tomas Hertl and onto the stick of Pavel Dorofeyev. Dorofeyev was able to land a perfect shot past Askarov to retake the team lead with his 17th goal of the season.

Vegas refused to let up the pressure in the second period, showing just why they are so dominant against the Sharks. Mark Stone made an excellent individual effort to beat two Sharks on the puck before firing it off to a wide-open Jack Eichel. Eichel would make no mistake to collect his second goal of the night.

The Golden Knights would use that momentum to coast through the period with ease. Tomas Hertl would add to the Vegas lead to tie Dorofeyev with his 17th goal on the second power play. Then, in a goal that showed just what kind of game this was, Zach Whitecloud was able to beat Askarov from deep to push the lead to four goals.

The Sharks were able to end the period on a positive note, with Alexander Wennberg able to cash in on a sudden odd-man rush to cut the lead back down to three.

It would be the closest the Sharks would get to a comeback, however, with Shea Theodore scoring an empty net goal and Hertl scoring his second goal and career-high fifth point of the game to finish the job.