Telltale month for Sharks begins Friday night against Winnipeg
Sharks will play 11 of next 14 at SAP Center, opening a six-game homestand Friday against Winnipeg Jets.
SAN JOSE — The Sharks open a homestand — and a telltale month — Friday night.
After playing nine of their first 13 games on the road, and to the tune of a 4-9-1 record, the Sharks will play their next six games at SAP Center. Except for a visit to Arizona at the end of the month, the Sharks will spend all of November in the Pacific Time zone.
“I think this month will really tell the tale of where we are at,” coach Pete DeBoer said Thursday. “We have a favorable schedule for the first time this year with a lot of home games. Hopefully we’ve learned what works and what isn’t working for us.”
Logan Couture had a succinct description of what’s not working. The Sharks, said the team’s captain and leading scorer, are “losing battles in their zone, in our zone, around our net, around their net.
“Obviously we are not happy. We’re not hitting the panic button. We’ve got 11 of our next 14 games here at home. This is a great opportunity for us to make some hay and get ourselves back to 500, and put ourselves in a good position going into December.”
Thursday, in the first practice since returning from a 1-3-1 swing through the Eastern Time zone, the Sharks spent time practicing low cycles and drills focusing on establishing a heavy forecheck. Much of this work could be seen as addressing a need “to change the mindset,” a theme of player and coaches comments after practice.
Evander Kane said the team needs to be “playing a little meaner… More things open up. It creates turnovers on the other team, gets guys guessing a little. It makes guys hesitate. That’s what Boston did to us last game, and we were hesitating.”
Boston was the last stop on the trip, and the Sharks took a 5-1 beating.
DeBoer said the team was “a little fragile going into the Boston game. Boston jumped on us. We were on the end of a trip, they were fresh. They were firing on all cylinders, and they made us look real bad.”
HEALTH UPDATE: Defenseman Radek Simek will play Friday, but not for the Sharks. Simek, working his way back from major knee surgery in March, will be on the ice for the Barracuda’s AHL game against the Stockton Heat. Simek, 27, played for the Barracuda on Wednesday, his first game in eight months.
“It didn’t look like he missed a beat,” Barracuda coach Roy Sommer said. “I don’t think we’re going to have him for long.”
GOALIES: This desire for a competitive mindset goes for the goaltending as well. When asked about the goaltenders, DeBoer said: “You would like one of them to build on a good game. I think in the past we haven’t been afraid to keep going to a guy if he does that.”
He added: “Coaches don’t decide how much players play, players decide that by how they play. That’s for forwards, defenseman and goalies.”
PRACTICE PAIRINGS: DeBoer altered his line slightly, putting Timo Meier back with Couture and Patrick Marleau. DeBoer also appeared to be experimenting with different defense pairings, as the usual Vlasic-Burns, and Dillon-Karlsson pairs were often separated during drills.