It’s difficult to watch a game and commit each play, or even how one player performed, to memory. In an attempt to record what my eyes think they saw, I tried to focus on a handful of players, namely defenders, in the first period. My eye test told me Radim Simek did a good job a handful of times closing the gap between him and oncoming forwards in the neutral zone.
It seemed that, despite the Sharks shot advantage, the Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Justin Braun pair spent more time than not in their own zone.