The San Jose Sharks have officially been eliminated from postseason contention.<\/p>\n
Despite ending a 15-game losing streak to the Nashville Predators on Monday evening, the Sharks needed some help from the Seattle Kraken to keep their hopes alive, help which never came. The Los Angeles Kings defeated Seattle 5-3 to secure the second Wild Card spot in the Western Conference and eliminated both the Sharks and Predators in the process.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Overall, while it\u2019s easy to be disappointed by how the season has ended, the Sharks massively exceeded expectations this season. While they made it clear that they wanted to play meaningful games in the latter half of the season, I don\u2019t think anyone expected them to stay in the hunt until mid-April.<\/p>\n
The Sharks\u2019 success was mostly due to Macklin Celebrini\u2019s incredible performance this season. He emerged as a top player in the NHL at just 19 years of age and we\u2019ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
Last season, the Sharks finished last in the league with just 52 points and only 20 wins. This season, they nearly doubled that win total as they currently have 38 wins on the season, and they have 84 points at this stage.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, their downfall can be attributed to a six-game losing streak in the middle of March and a 3-4-1 record in April. The Sharks\u2019 lack of experience caught up with them, but they learned some valuable lessons in the meantime.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The season still isn\u2019t over for the Sharks though. They have two games remaining against the Chicago Blackhawks and the Winnipeg Jets to end the campaign, but now they\u2019ll be more focused on evaluating talent and long-term decision making rather than fighting to survive.<\/p>\n
Sharks general manager Mike Grier has a busy summer ahead, full of difficult decisions. This season raised expectations, and next season they won\u2019t get the same benefit of the doubt for missing the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Jose Sharks have officially been eliminated from postseason contention. Despite ending a 15-game losing streak to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1706,92517,12753,88,90,89,98,2071,13190,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-266818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-los-angeles-kings","9":"tag-losing-streak","10":"tag-nashville-predators","11":"tag-san-jose","12":"tag-san-jose-headlines","13":"tag-san-jose-news","14":"tag-san-jose-sharks","15":"tag-seattle-kraken","16":"tag-the-sharks","17":"tag-winnipeg-jets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}