Stenberg hat trick and Misa’s four-point night send Sharks past Ducks 10-0

The game was effectively written in the first 16 minutes

The Sharks did not spend long feeling out this NHL matchup. Mason Marchment opened the scoring at 3:55 of the first period with an unassisted wrist shot, and San Jose kept the pressure on the scoreboard in quick, clean bursts after that. Ivar Stenberg made it 2-0 at 5:29 on a tip-in from Michael Misa, Igor Chernyshov scored at 9:29, Misa added one of his own at 11:33, and Chernyshov struck again at 15:45. Before the first intermission arrived, the Ducks were already chasing a five-goal deficit.

That kind of opening changes the entire conversation of a game. Anaheim did not lose every underlying category by a huge margin — the final shot count was only 27-21 for San Jose and the faceoff split finished 52-48 — but the Sharks turned their early possessions into goals at a rate the Ducks could not absorb. Anaheim used both Ville Husso and Laurent Brossoit over the course of the night, and the change in net never slowed the scoring. Husso finished with 13 saves on 19 shots in 30:06, while Brossoit stopped four of eight in 27:10.

San Jose resumed where it had left off. Stenberg’s second goal arrived at 3:04 of the second period, with Misa collecting another assist, and Marchment made it 7-0 at 12:57 off helpers from Will Smith and Macklin Celebrini. At that point the only remaining question was how many Sharks would find their way onto the scoresheet. The answer kept growing, because this was not one player carrying the offense; it was wave after wave of finishing from different parts of the lineup.

Stenberg and Misa were at the center of almost everything

Stenberg’s hat trick was the night’s signature individual line, and it came in three distinct chapters. He started it with the first-period tip-in, doubled his total early in the second on a wrist shot set up by Misa and Kiefer Sherwood, and completed the hat trick at 16:57 of the third off a play finished with Brett Leason and Jimmy Huntington on the assists. He also added an assist on Misa’s first-period goal, which left him with four points in all.

Misa matched that four-point total in a different way, scoring once and setting up three more. His assist on Stenberg’s first goal opened the connection between the two, he buried a wrist shot at 11:33 of the first to make it 4-0, and he later assisted on Stenberg’s second and Leason’s third-period tip-in. Chernyshov also had a big hand in the runaway result with two goals and an assist, while Marchment scored twice. By the end, San Jose had built a double-digit night without asking one player to do all the heavy lifting.

Even after the outcome was settled, the Sharks kept adding cleanly to the scoreline. Leason’s tip-in at 7:54 of the third made it 8-0, Stenberg completed his hat trick at 16:57, and Filip Bystedt scored just 26 seconds later at 17:23 from Chernyshov’s assist. Bystedt finished with a goal and an assist, Huntington had two assists, and Alex Nedeljkovic made sure none of that offensive work went to waste. He stopped all 21 Anaheim shots and turned away seven more while the Ducks were on the power play.

Our take: this was not about volume alone

A 10-0 result naturally looks like total territorial control, but the numbers say something a bit more specific. San Jose led shots by six and faceoffs by only two, so this was not simply a matter of overwhelming volume from start to finish. The bigger differences were what the Sharks did with their chances, what happened on special teams, and how much cleaner they were with the puck. San Jose scored twice on five power-play opportunities, while Anaheim went 0-for-4, and the Ducks were charged with 16 giveaways compared with 10 by the Sharks.

For Anaheim, that points to the most reasonable places to improve. Better puck management has to be near the top of the list when a night includes 16 giveaways and no takeaways, and the power play has to produce more than zero goals in four chances when the opposition takes five penalties. The Ducks also gave up two power-play goals of their own, so the special-teams gap cut both ways. None of that alone explains a 10-goal defeat, but together those details describe why the game got away so quickly.

For San Jose, the easy temptation is to treat a score like this as evidence that nothing needs cleaning up. Our take is that the Sharks can still be sharper in discipline and possession even on a night this comfortable. They took five penalties, gave Anaheim four power plays and were charged with 10 giveaways themselves. Still, that is nitpicking around an emphatic performance. Ten goals, 16 assists, a shutout, and seven different Sharks with at least two points is the profile of a team that spread the work and finished relentlessly when opportunities arrived.

Scoring moments

1. 1st · 3:55

   Mason Marchment Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: none

2. 1st · 5:29

   Ivar Stenberg Goal (1) Tip-In, assists: Michael Misa (1)

3. 1st · 9:29

   Igor Chernyshov Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: Filip Bystedt (1), Jimmy Huntington (1)

4. 1st · 11:33

   Michael Misa Goal (2) Wrist Shot, assists: Ivar Stenberg (2), Nolan Allan (1)

5. 1st · 15:45

   Igor Chernyshov Goal (2) Wrist Shot, assists: Luca Cagnoni (1), Sam Dickinson (1)

6. 2nd · 3:04

   Ivar Stenberg Goal (2) Wrist Shot, assists: Michael Misa (2), Kiefer Sherwood (1)

7. 2nd · 12:57

   Mason Marchment Goal (2) Wrist Shot, assists: Will Smith (1), Macklin Celebrini (1)

8. 3rd · 7:54

   Brett Leason Goal (1) Tip-In, assists: Eric Pohlkamp (1), Michael Misa (3)

9. 3rd · 16:57

   Ivar Stenberg Goal (3) Wrist Shot, assists: Brett Leason (2), Jimmy Huntington (2)

10. 3rd · 17:23

    Filip Bystedt Goal (1) Wrist Shot, assists: Igor Chernyshov (1)