Sharks takeaways: What we learned in dominant 4-1 win over rival Kings

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SAN JOSE -- The Sharks didn't have the same trouble against the Los Angeles teams as they did earlier in the week

San Jose got off to a strong start and never looked back in their Black Friday rematch, shutting down the Pacific Division foe 4-1.

Here are three takeaways from the Friday matinee.

Energy

Suffice to say, San Jose jumped out in Friday's game with much more jump than they had on Wednesday against the Winnipeg Jets. Whether that boost of energy came from Tomas Hertl's return to the lineup or not isn't clear, but whatever the reason, San Jose looked much fresher.

What's more, is that the Sharks didn't sag in the third period like they did when they played the Kings on Monday night. LA might have dominated the shot clock all day, but the home team's defense didn't sag and was able to keep them from doing any damage.

Depth scoring

Even through San Jose's run of nine wins in 10 games, they still struggled with getting contributions from their bottom six. But in their post-Thanksgiving fete with the Kings, the Sharks got scoring from all parts of their lineup -- from Patrick Marleau opening up scoring in the first frame to Noah Gregor scoring his first NHL goal in the second. 

San Jose even got offensive contributions on the back end, from Marc-Edouard Vlasic scoring on the delayed penalty to Martin Jones registering the secondary assist on Gregor's goal. Admittedly, getting so much all-around scoring like this won't likely happen on a nightly basis. But if San Jose can get more contributions from their bottom six, they will have more success.

The cleanest game they've played in a while

As NBC Sports California discussed throughout the course of the month, the Sharks have been taking too many penalties and zapping the energy out of their five-on-five game. But they only took one penalty in Friday's game, which allowed them to build more momentum at even strength -- which probably also helped them keep their energy up throughout the afternoon.

Perhaps the only criticism of San Jose's win over LA was that their power play still isn't clicking. They only had three opportunities on the man advantage on Friday, but neither opportunity generated much. While the power play clearly didn't have any huge impact on Friday's game, it's still an area of the Sharks game that needs to improve.

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