Takeaways: Sharks’ offensive woes reach historical levels
ANAHEIM — The Sharks showed more energy and competed harder against the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday night than they did in their first two games of the season against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Unfortunately for the Sharks, when you’re in an offensive funk of historical proportions, mistakes are hard to overcome.
The Sharks had 36 shots, including 14 in the third period, but struggled to beat goalie John Gibson in a 3-1 loss at the Honda Center. Logan Couture scored for the Sharks, who now have just three goals in three games — the fewest they’ve had to start a season in their 27-plus seasons as an NHL franchise. The previous low was five, set last year.
“I think our effort was there all night,” Sharks coach Pete DeBoer said. “I thought for three (games) in four nights and being on the road, I thought especially our big guys played really hard.”
Following consecutive losses to the Golden Knights in which they were outscored 9-2, the Sharks are now 0-3 for the first time since the 1993-94 season when coach Kevin Constantine was in his first year behind a San Jose bench that featured Sergei Makarov, Sandis Ozolinsh and Igor Larionov.
How do the Sharks get out of this?
“We’ve got to work,” Couture said. “It’s not easy to score goals or win hockey games in the NHL unless you work. Every team is talented in this league. Usually the teams that work harder win games. All three so far, the other team has outworked us.”
Sharks winger Marcus Sorensen was injured midway through the second period. Sorensen, skating hard as he got a shot on Gibson, crashed into the end boards with 9:23 left in the second period. He did not return.
One positive — the Sharks will get back Evander Kane for Tuesday’s game in Nashville against the Predators.
Takeaways from Saturday night in Orange County.
1. Second period miscues prove costly: Couture’s goal at the 5:44 mark of the second period may have given his team a chance to reset, or at least grab momentum, after an Aaron Dell gaffe in the first period put the Sharks in another early hole.
But just 67 seconds later, on a quick transition play, Ondrej Kase found an open Ryan Getzlaf skating into the zone. Getzlaf then put a backhand to forehand move on Dell and scored his first of the season to restore Anaheim’s one-goal lead. On the play, Marc-Edouard Vlasic tried to make a change as he skated toward the bench, and couldn’t get back in position in time when the play returned up the ice.
Late in the second period, Tomas Hertl skated out of his own end with the puck before he had it stripped by Devin Shore. Adam Henrique pounced on the loose puck and with every Sharks skater on the ice for over a minute at that point, skated right around Kevin Labanc and beat Dell from in close for a 3-1 Ducks lead with 1:12 left in the second period.
“There was a bunch of things before that that led to that goal,” Labanc said. “Like a bunch of defensive errors in our own end. They got the puck, had speed and cashed in on it. Just got to be better defensively and at same time, you can’t just win off one goal every night. We’ve got to find ways to find offense.”
Naturalstattrick,com listed the Ducks as having 18 scoring chances in the second period compared to seven for the Sharks, as the middle 20 minutes has been an issue since Wednesday’s opener. Counting Saturday, the Sharks have now been outscored 5-0 in three second periods.
“We got hemmed in our own zone a lot in that period,” Dell said. “I think that the guys were tired. We (had) a little bit of a short bench when Marcus went down. We had the long change, too. It’s tough. You get trapped and guys are gassed. You have to really bear down on those and get those clears.”
2. Dell rebounds from early miscue: Once again, the Sharks had to play from behind early in the game.
After a Labanc turnover at the Anaheim blue line, the puck made its way behind the Sharks net. Dell went back to play it and tried to feed Brenden Dillon in the corner with a backhand pass behind the goal line. But the pass was picked off by a forechecking Kase, who found an open Michael Del Zotto in front for a 1-0 Ducks lead just 3:38 into the game.
“It happens. Deller played a good game today, we didn’t really focus on that,” Dillon said. “I thought we were playing our game and to our credit, we kept pushing in the first.”
The Sharks up until that point had put together a handful of good shifts, and played pretty well for the 16 minutes and 22 seconds that followed Del Zotto’s goal. But the Sharks have still not played with a lead yet this season.
Dell finished with 30 saves, which included 11 in the third period, and one in the second where he made a big save on Henrique after another giveaway.
“It’s going to happen once in a while,” Dell said. “They want us to play the puck a lot and help the (defensemen) out. It usually helps us more than it hurts us. But (Kase) just made a good read on it. It almost got through, still. But he managed to stop it and get it out to (Del Zotto).”
“I thought he made some saves after that,” DeBoer said. “Going back to exhibition, we’re barely getting a goal a night. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of room for errors like that.”
3. The power play shows some life: The end result was that the Sharks went 0-for-4 with the man advantage Saturday and are now 0-for-14 on the season.
Still, the Sharks power play showed some life, finishing with 12 shots. Gibson just came up huge on one attempt after another.
“Power play, we’ve got to find a way to score goals,” Labanc said. “We take a lot of pride in our power play. We’ve got two great defensemen in (Brent Burns) and (Karlsson), Couture, Tommy (Hertl), Timo (Meier), Jumbo (Joe Thornton). There’s no excuse for us to not score, or at least get a really good opportunity on every single power play.
“That being said, we’ve got to go back to the chalkboard, find ways to score goals, find ways to enter the zone cleaner and give ourselves a better chance to score goals.”