Sharks Know They Can Rely on Jones

PITTSBURGH — The goaltenders have been the story of these playoffs, over and over and over again. Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury. Brian Elliott and Jake Allen. Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi. Whether by virtue of injury or performance or both, teams have had to rely on starters and backups and starters as backups and backups as starters.

Not the Sharks.

In what has been a rarity this season, the Sharks have relied almost totally on Martin Jones – in his first season as a starter, no less – as they’ve made it through the gauntlet of the Western Conference playoffs all the way to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Final.

Jones has played all but 29:05 of this playoff run, made 440 of the 446 saves by Sharks goaltenders, earned 12 of 12 wins necessary to get to this point. In doing so, he has soothed the minds of his teammates, smoothed the way forward, not been the story but been part of the story.

“It does steady our team,” defenseman Paul Martin said. “Jonesy in general is a pretty reserved goaltender. He’s really calm back there, which makes it easy for us to play defense in front of him. Not too many things get to him or rattle him. So to know that he’s back there every game giving us the chance to win is big and not worrying about, OK, if he lets one in, are we going to be changing goalies? I think the mental part of that really helps.”

He, and the Sharks, watched that happen in the Western Conference Final. They saw the St. Louis Blues pull Elliott in Game 3, saw them start Allen in Game 4 and Game 5, before they went back to Elliott in Game 6.

He saw the uncertainty. He …

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