Season’s second-smallest crowd sees Sharks lose to NHL’s last-place team. Are we sure Bedard can fix this?

SAN JOSE – The San Jose Sharks just lost to the NHL’s last-place team in front of their second-smallest announced crowd of the season.

Are we sure Connor Bedard can cure all that ails this organization?

Seems like a tall order for a 17-year-old.

The Sharks are now just two points out of 32nd and last place in the NHL after a wild 6-5 overtime loss to that last-place team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, on Tuesday, and were officially eliminated from playoff contention. The Sharks announced that 10,127 tickets had been distributed for the game, the fourth-smallest total over the last two years.

The team that finishes 32nd and last overall will have a 25.5 percent chance of winning the NHL’s draft lottery and thereby earning the right to select Bedard, the projected superstar-in-waiting, this summer.

Bedard, with 125 points in 51 WHL games this season, is the consensus No. 1 player available in this year’s NHL Draft. He turns 18 in July, and would no doubt give a shot in the arm, on the ice and off, to any team he joins.

But to go from an entertaining team to one that competes for a playoff spot, the Sharks (19-36-13) are going to have to learn how to keep the puck out of their own net.

It’s now three of the last four seasons that the Sharks will finish as one of the NHL’s worst teams in preventing goals, and this year is shaping to be the lousiest of the lot.

During 5-on-5 play, the Sharks are allowing 2.73 goals per game, the second-worst average in the league ahead of only Anaheim (2.82). Not coincidentally, the Ducks have the fourth-worst record in the NHL at 22-35-10.

The only teams in a playoff spot right now who have allowed 2.1 goals per game or more during 5-on-5 play are the Edmonton Oilers (2.13) and Pittsburgh Penguins (2.10), who are led by Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby, respectively.

Goalie Kaapo Kahkonen made 42 saves Tuesday but the Sharks allowed four 5-on-5 goals to the Blue Jackets. The fifth even-strength goal came in overtime when Johnny Gaudreau capped a five-point night with his 17th goal of the season.

“You win in this league by defending hard. You create offense by defending hard,” Sharks captain Logan Couture said. “At the end of the year when you’re maybe out of a playoff race, it’s easy to forget about defending. But that creates good habits, is when you play hard, you play above your man, and I think we’ve got to get back to that. I don’t think we defended very well tonight.”

“I thought it was very loose,” Sharks coach David Quinn said. “I thought it had a pond hockey feel to it from our end of it. You’re not going to win hockey games when you give up six goals and be that loose and give up the chances we gave up.”

At times Tuesday, it was obvious that these were the 31st and 32nd place teams in the NHL.

Alexander Barabanov scored a power-play goal eight minutes into the first period, then the Sharks went another 22:24 before they recorded their next official shot, as rookie William Eklund scored his first NHL goal at the 10:24 mark of the second.

At one point in the second period, the Sharks had more missed shots than official shots.

And although Columbus goalie Daniil Tarasov had faced just 16 shots in the first 40 minutes, he still allowed three goals, including one on a shot by Couture from close to 50 feet away.

“It’s always surprising when you wrist one in there that’s going about 40 miles per hour and it finds the back of the net,” Couture said.

There were other positives for San Jose. Eklund’s goal, his first in 20 NHL games, was all about effort as he found a loose puck in front of the Columbus net and backhanded it past Tarasov. Defenseman Nikolai Knyzhov also scored his first NHL goal since April 2021 after he spent much of the two seasons recovering from a litany of injuries and ailments. Kevin Labanc also scored and played his best game in weeks.

“It’s something all kids dream of, scoring your first goal in the NHL,” Eklund, 20, said. “I’ve been waiting a long (time) for this and had a lot of chances. So it was nice to finally get this one and keep on going from here.”

Still, the Sharks are now 6-20-8 at home this season, and it could get worse. All seven of their remaining games at SAP Center are against teams that are currently in a playoff spot. They also have seven road games left, as finishing in last place in the NHL seems like a real possibility now for the Sharks.

There’s also a long way to go off the ice, as the average announced attendance/tickets distributed for Sharks home games this season is 13,965, down from 16,428 in 2019-2020.

Tuesday, all of those issues were laid bare.

It seems like a lot for one teenager to try and fix.