Record 50-50 draw at Oilers playoff home opener

The Sharks outshot Edmonton 34-9 after the first intermission. "If he comes back, I'm hopeful he'll be stronger". They were able to best the Oilers on Wednesday without one of their better offensive weapons, but Edmonton likely will put up a fight in Game 2 before the series swings south. The win was even more surprising as the Sharks finished the season 1-22-1 when trailing after 2 periods.

"We started out well but obviously the end result wasn't what we wanted".

PITTSBURGH - Marc-Andre Fleury, a last-minute starter after goaltender Matt Murray got hurt during the pregame warmup, stopped 31 of 32 shots as Pittsburgh beat Columbus in Game 1 of a first-round Eastern Conference playoff series at PPG Paints Arena.

The Sharks played without star center Joe Thornton, who is day-to-day with a left knee injury. San Jose's power play was ranked 25th in the National Hockey League in the regular season at 16.7 per cent.

Over the past decade, as the Oilers sat idle at this time of the year, the Sharks had reached postseason nine times, including losing in the Stanley Cup finals to the Penguins last year.

The Sharks, however, are the defending Western Conference champions with 1,169 games of playoff experience on their roster compared with 342 for Edmonton. "Tonight we did all those little things".

"We got what we probably deserved out there". "Tonight we did. It was a huge bounce-back game and a big confidence booster". "It was just a matter of time before the puck was going to go in".

The Sharks had a first period to forget but found a rhythm in the second period, with Joel Ward's power play goal helping to change the momentum.

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Letestu promptly passed to the streaking Kassian, who barreled in alone and fired a wrist shot low past the blocker of goalie Martin Jones. Kassian had no problem getting the puck past Martin Jones and gave the Oilers the lead.

The Oilers won 10 of their last 12 games in the regular season to overtake San Jose and clinch second place and home-ice advantage in the first round. Now San Jose can do one better and sweep the opening road stanza in Alberta and head back to Silicon Valley with a 2-0 lead in its pocket.

With four skaters aside, Tomas Hertl fought off a check from Oilers defenseman Kris Russell, took the puck in front and got a shot on Edmonton goalie Cam Talbot. The Sharks are averaging 2.7 goals per game and are scoring on 16.7 percent of their power play opportunities. Edmonton winger Jordan Eberle said that took a toll.

"We've got to stay out of the box".

"You're talking about guys, they've seen that before", DeBoer said. "We brought a lot of energy". "We talk about it all the time".

"We didn't, and that's got to get fixed going forward". "We just need to work through it". The Oilers had missed the playoffs for 10 consecutive seasons before this year.

The Oilers continued to dictate the pace in the early going.