DETROIT — Logan Couture — who was both a hero and a goat Tuesday night — did the most succinct job of spelling out the consequences of his team’s 3-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings.
“We’ve got one game to save our season,” Couture said.
That one game comes Thursday night at HP Pavilion, where San Jose has the dual challenge of not only trying to advance to the Western Conference finals, but also to avoid becoming only the fourth team in NHL history to lose a playoff series after winning the first three contests.
A Game 6 victory at Joe Louis Arena would have spared the Sharks that possibility.
And that win appeared to be within San Jose’s grasp as goalie Antti Niemi made spectacular saves through the first 50 minutes, and Couture batted a rebound past Detroit goaltender Jimmy Howard for a 1-0 lead at 3:54 of the third period.
But goals by the Red Wings’ Henrik Zetterberg and Valtteri Filppula less than two minutes apart changed things in a hurry. And when Darren Helm fired the puck into an empty net with 65 seconds left, the Sharks knew they would be answering questions about self-doubt.
“There’s no doubt in my mind and there shouldn’t be any doubt in any of the players’ minds,” Couture said. “I’m sure there’s doubt in the media or whatever, but that’s the outside world.”
It was a mistake by Couture that led to the deciding goal, and he owned up to the errant clearing pass that was picked off by Filppula in the neutral zone.
“Bad turnover by me,” Couture said. “I was just trying to go off the boards and let Mitchy (Torrey Mitchell) skate onto it. I didn’t see Filppula there. That can’t happen in the playoffs.”
But the bigger problem was the inability of the Sharks — who were without their leading playoff scorer, Ryane Clowe, because of an upper-body injury — to sustain any offense in the opening two periods of a game that saw them outshot by the Red Wings 45-25. And that’s where coach Todd McLellan focused his concerns.
“The performance tonight was disappointing,” he said. “One team skated, the other team did not skate at all, and that was pretty evident right through the first two periods.”
That disappointment was so great, in fact, that McLellan dismissed a question about the fact San Jose again blew a third-period lead en route to a playoff loss.
“You know what? We were awfully lucky to be in the game in the third period, so I’m not too concerned about that,” he said.
Couture’s goal came on a rebound of a shot by Dany Heatley. Howard got a piece of the puck, but it trickled across the goal line before he could cover it up with his glove, and after a video review, the Sharks had a 1-0 lead.
On the 39th shot that Niemi faced, Zetterberg tied the game at 10:38 when he deflected a shot from the high slot by Niklas Kronwall, who had just jumped off the bench to take a pass from Filppula.
And it was Filppula who not only intercepted a puck that Couture intended for Mitchell, but also got himself in position to take a return centering pass from Pavel Datsyuk for an easy tap-in at 12:32.
In addition to dealing with the fact the series is now tied at 3-3, the Sharks were also lamenting the fact they didn’t give Niemi the support he needed.
“Nemo played great and stole the game early for us, but obviously we couldn’t hold onto it,” Joe Thornton said. “He played super. He gave us a chance to win, but we couldn’t do it.”
This is only the eighth time in NHL history that a series that started out 3-0 ended up going to a seventh game. In four of the seven previous times, the team that won the first three games ended up winning the series.
But McLellan said that’s exactly the kind of history he and his team will ignore.
“We could be in the exact same situation we are right now by winning one, losing one, winning one, losing one,” he said. “Doesn’t matter how we got here, it really doesn’t. What matters is how it ends, and that’s how we’ll approach it.”
From Thornton’s perspective, the HP Pavilion setting is important as far as the Sharks chances of getting a shot at the Vancouver Canucks in the conference finals that would begin on the road Sunday night.
“You work 82 games to get home ice for these game sevens,” he said. “Now we’ve just got to make it work.”
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks. Contact him at 408-920-5940.
