SAN JOSE – With some better results, the Sharks could easily have some breathing room above the playoff cutline right now. Or, considering their recent struggles, and with 15 games left, they could be mostly out of contention.
Somehow, neither is the case, as the middling Sharks have greatly benefited from being in the NHL’s worst division.
Going into their matinee game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, the Sharks (32-29-6), who have won only two of their last eight, remain just two points out of a playoff spot, although they’ve fallen from ninth to 11th in the Western Conference over the last 11 days.
If the Sharks were in the East, they’d be in 15th place, and already thinking about the draft lottery.
The Sharks lost 5-0 to the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday and have not earned any points in their last three games, allowing 16 goals on a manned net in the process.
It has hardly mattered. Pacific Division teams went a combined 0-5-1 on Thursday, with the Seattle Kraken losing in regulation time to the Nashville Predators and the Los Angeles Kings losing in a shootout to the Flyers.
Only one Pacific Division team, the Anaheim Ducks, actually has more wins than losses when overtime and shootout results are included.
The Sharks, with 70 points, now trail the Kraken and Predators by one point, and the Kings, who hold the second wild card spot in the West, by two. The Sharks have one game in hand on all three teams.
“We’re right in it still,” Sharks goalie Alex Nedeljkovic said after he stopped 11 of 16 shots in the loss to the Sabres. “Nobody really wants to take advantage of everybody else’s mishaps right now. So, we’re getting fortunate. We’re getting a little bit of help there, and we just need to worry about ourselves now.”
Nedeljkovic added that the Sharks might be a bit guilty of scoreboard watching. Not that they’re checking their phones for results during intermissions, but they’ve perhaps been too hopeful that other teams around them in the standings continue to struggle.
The focus needs to be on themselves, and there is plenty to improve upon there.
The Sharks in their last six games have allowed 27 goals, and, per Natural Stat Trick, 73 high-danger chances during 5-on-5 play – more than any other NHL team.
The Sabres generated 13 such chances on Thursday and scored on four consecutive shots from the 9:05 mark of the second period to the 40-second mark of the third.
The Sharks felt it wasn’t a 5-0 game. They played a solid first period when they generated at least three Grade A scoring chances during 5-on-5 play, although that wasn’t reflected in Natural Stat Trick’s accounting.
Will Smith also hit the post in the second period, right before Noah Ostlund scored the first goal, pouncing on a funky bounce off the end boards.
“I don’t think we played as bad a game as the score showed,” Sharks forward Adam Gaudette said. “But just some mistakes, and they capitalized and put it in the net.”
Sam Carrick and Rasmus Dahlin then both scored on quick transition plays, with the Sabres catching the Sharks on a line change on Dahlin’s goal at the 10:48 mark of the second that made it 3-0.
Sharks defenseman Mario Ferraro was unable to catch up with Dahlin, who was all alone on Nedeljkovic, after the line change. The Sharks were also listed as having 19 giveaways.
“Especially at this time of the year, we know that can’t happen. It’s going to hurt us,” Ferraro said of the giveaways. “Our first period was pretty good, but I think what happens is, when we let in a goal, there’s a little bit of a snowball effect. We go down two, maybe three, we try to find quick ways to fix it, and we get off our game plan, we go off script, and more turnovers start being created, and then more chances again.
“So, a lot of our problem is trying to fix it and changing the way that we play throughout the game, when we’re down or when we don’t have momentum, and it hurts us a little more. So, it’s finding ways to weather it, and that’s kind of what happened tonight.”
The Sharks have opportunities to get things right, as after Saturday, 10 of their final 14 games are against teams either below or, like Nashville, right above them in the NHL standings.
The Kings are on pace for 87 points. If that holds up, the Sharks only need 18 more points in their final 15 games to catch them. Maybe that’ll be enough to hold off Nashville and Seattle, too.
The Sharks just can’t get too caught up in what those teams are doing.
“We’ve got to stop scoreboard watching and start worrying about what we can do to secure points every single night, just taking it shift by shift,” Nedeljkovic said. “It starts there. You win your shift. That doesn’t mean scoring a goal. It doesn’t mean getting an assist, or even sometimes playing in the offensive zone.
“Sometimes it just means maybe you blocked a shot, or you didn’t allow a clean entry. You got a hit. You did something to get us some momentum, or at least keep it sort of 50/50. Leave the ice, and put your teammates in a good spot to have success in their shift coming up. So we have to just focus on ourselves, one shift at a time, and get back to what makes us successful.”