Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Detroit Red wings beat the San Jose Sharks 7–1 in their fourth quarter final match of the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs on Thursday night, reducing San Jose’s series lead to three games to one.

Detroit would go up to a five goal to zero lead in the first period, with Johan Franzén scoring three goals (commonly known as a hat-trick). In the second period, Detroit scored one another goal to take a six goal to zero lead. Dany Heatley of the San Jose Sharks eventually scored to reduce Detroits lead to six goals to one in the same period, but could not lift the team to score any more.

In the third period, Franzén scored his fourth and final goal of the game. Detroit won seven goals to one.

The next game will be hosted by San Jose on Saturday night. If the San Jose Sharks win Game 5, they will advance to the Conference Finals. Detroit are forced to win three games in a row in order to advance to the Conference Finals. The winning team in this series (first team to win 4 games) will advance to the Conference Finals of the Western Conference, where they’ll either meet the Chicago Blackhawks or the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks are currently leading that series, 3 games to 1.

The winning team in the Conference Finals of the Western Conference will advance to the Stanley Cup Final, also a best-of-7-games-series, where they meet the winner of the Conference Finals of the Eastern Conference.