San Jose Sharks defenseman Jaycob Megna (24) and Buffalo Sabres right wing JJ Peterka (77) battle in the crease during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes) San Jose Sharks defenseman Jaycob Megna (24) and Buffalo Sabres right wing JJ Peterka (77) battle in the crease during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
The San Jose Sharks lost a lot more games than they won over the first six weeks of the season. But in that time they could at least return home after two challenging four-game road trips feeling like their team was headed in the right direction.
That simply wasn’t the case after the Sharks finished their latest four-game road trip with a dismal 6-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Sunday.
Right now, after just one win in their last seven games, it feels like the Sharks (8-16-4) have reached a new low point in their season.
“They outcompeted us for a lot of the night, and that can’t happen,” Sharks forward Nick Bonino said Sunday of the Sabres. “That’s something that you can’t really say about us to this point in the year. It’s very rare for that to happen, and tonight things kind of got away from us.”
Three weeks ago the Sharks were riding a three-game win streak to help improve to 6-9-3 overall, putting them on a trajectory that would help erase an 0-5-0 start and perhaps even get back into the playoff picture.
That uptick included wins over the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 23 and the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 15 to close out a pair of road trips on a positive note.
Since the win over the Golden Knights, though, the Sharks have gone 2-7-1. After their 1-3-0 road trip, the Sharks entered Monday with a .357 points percentage – second-lowest in the NHL ahead of only the Anaheim Ducks’ .288 mark.
The Sharks’ goaltending has mostly been mediocre in this stretch and several skaters remain prone to catastrophic mistakes or turnovers. Timo Meier is now on a six-game goalless skid, and suddenly the Sharks can’t stop taking penalties, either through physical or mental mistakes.
And when the Sharks aren’t competing hard, as Bonino alluded to, they have no shot.
“We’ve just got to have more pushback in our game,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “I thought we had that for an extended period of time, but we’ve lost that along the way here and we’ve got to get back to playing like that.”
Sunday’s second period proved to be typical of the Sharks’ recent frustrations.
Leading 2-1, the Sharks gave up the game-tying goal just scored 16 seconds into the second period, as Sabres forward JJ Peterka took a stretch pass from Dylan Cozens and beat goalie Aaron Dell on a breakaway.
Just four minutes later, an ill-advised east-west pass from Luke Kunin to Radim Simek on a Sharks zone entry was poked away by Sabres defenseman Henri Jokiharju to Jeff Skinner. He cruised into the Sharks’ end and after Nick Cicek crashed into Dell, knocking them both down, Skinner fired into a mostly empty net for his 12th goal of the season.
Kunin’s pass is exactly the type of play the Sharks need to extricate from their game, but it was just the beginning,
Rasmus Dahlin
pic.twitter.com/gLg2nobeig
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 5, 2022
Just a couple minutes after Skinner’s goal, Sharks forward Matt Nieto took control of the puck, entered the Buffalo Sabres zone, and cut toward the middle of the ice to try and get past defenseman Rasmus Dahlin.
No such luck.
The 6-foot-3, 202-pound Dahlin crouched down and put his shoulder into the body of the 5-11, 187-pound Nieto, laying a thunderous but clean hit that put the Sharks winger flat on his backside to the left of the Sabres net.
At that point, Quinn had seen enough.
During the next television timeout, with his team now trailing by a goal, Quinn called every Sharks player over to the bench for an impromptu heart-to-heart.
“I just thought they were out-everything us,” Quinn said of the meeting. “They were outskating us, they were out-hitting us, they were doing everything better than we were. At some point in time, you’ve got to say enough’s enough and there’s got to be pushback.”
Meier tried to exact some revenge on Dahlin a few minutes later, but Dahlin dodged the check, and Meier crashed into the boards.
San Jose’s next game is Wednesday at home against the Vancouver Canucks.
“Take a step back, get home,” Bonino said. “Two back-to-backs on this road trip, get a little bit of sleep and get ready for Wednesday.”
For at least a portion of the Sharks’ fan base, the team’s dismal first third of the season has gone exactly as they’ve hoped. The more the losses pile up, the better the chance the Sharks will have of drafting a generational-type player next year to add to an already solid cadre of young prospects.
Quite frankly, who could blame them?
But if the last few games have shown anything, it’s that the Sharks are more than one player away from returning to relevancy. As bad as it is right now for the Sharks, it could still get a whole lot worse.
Originally published at Curtis Pashelka