Sharks start slow, finish poorly, in ‘lifeless’ loss to Nashville Predators
SAN JOSE — Mikael Granlund and Nino Niederreiter each scored twice, and the Nashville Predators beat the Sharks 6-2 on Thursday night, handing a listless San Jose team one of its most lopsided losses on home ice this season.
Yakov Trenin and Tommy Novak also scored for Nashville (28-22-6), which won for the third time in four games and moved to within five points of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.
Granlund now has nine goals this season and Niederreiter extended his goal streak to three games.
Matt Duchene had three assists, and Juuse Saros made 22 saves for his 22nd win, as the Predators swept the Sharks in their three-game season series. Nashville also beat San Jose two times in October in the Global Series games in Prague.
Nico Sturm scored his 11th goal and Martin Kaut scored his first for the Sharks, whose only other losses by four goals or more on home ice this season were to Calgary (7-3) on Dec. 20 and Edmonton (7-1) on Jan. 13.
The Sharks (18-30-11) remain in 29th place in the NHL’s overall standings and are now just two points ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks, who have won four straight games and visit SAP Center on Saturday.
“Pretty lifeless performance by the group overall,” Sturm said. “We’re obviously not looking too good in the standings. I thought at least one thing that was always going for us this year is that the group was competing hard. It always looked like everybody was trying and found a reason to play for something, and tonight was one of the rare occasions I thought where in just all areas of the ice, we looked weak. We pretty much lost all the battles.
“That’s kind of what it comes down to. If you don’t finish hits, you lose one-on-one battles all over the ice and (Nashville) made it look like they had a lot of fun against us tonight and that’s tough to watch.”
James Reimer made 24 saves for San Jose, three days after he made 26 saves in the Sharks’ 4-0 home win over the Seattle Kraken. But the Sharks, who were without leading goal-scorer Timo Meier for a second straight game, are now 0-5-1 in attempts to win back-to-back games on home ice this season. Meier is out with an upper-body injury.
San Jose is now 6-15-7 at home this year. Besides hosting the Blackhawks on Saturday, the Sharks are also retiring Patrick Marleau’s No. 12 jersey.
Marleau and his family, along with a handful of other former Sharks players, were among the announced crowd of 11,320 on hand Thursday.
“We had a pretty good effort against Seattle. Tonight, it was really a 180,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “I thought we were lifeless. I thought we were really not sharp and a lot of ways, and it was team-wide. There weren’t many guys that are good nights tonight, and we’ve got to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Niederreiter’s first goal came 6:24 into the first period on a power play. Reimer was heavily screened on the play.
Granlund scored his first of the night in the second period by sneaking the puck through traffic and getting it past Reimer.
While on the penalty kill, Sturm zipped down the ice to grab a puck that had left the defensive zone. He beat Predators defenseman Roman Josi to the puck and picked the far corner on Saros for a short-handed goal.
Still, the Sharks went 0-for-5 on the power play and turned the puck over too many times to have a chance against the desperate Predators.
“The good teams, their bad isn’t that bad, and unfortunately for us, when we’ve had bad nights, it has been pretty bad,” Quinn said. “So we’ve got to find a way to raise our floor. Not only raise our ceiling, but find a way to raise the floor, so if you’re not feeling it or things aren’t going well, you find a way to manage a game and simplify it and fight through it and make it really difficult on your opponent, and we didn’t do that tonight.”
Staff writer Curtis Pashelka contributed to this report.